11. Zara's quilt

The first quilt I ever made was a wedding present for my friend who lives in an 1880's farm house (old for Australia).
It was a Queen size quilt - what was I thinking?
I managed to finish it for their first wedding anniversary ;)
...
Anyhow, a year ago they had a baby girl and I was planning to finish it before she was born.  This didn't happen.  I bought the fabric before she was born and then I cut everything else the week of my birthday in January.  Things slowed after that and I managed to finish sewing on the label the night before her first birthday partyin December!

And here it is:

 I used the Purl Bee Flying Geese Mini Quilt as the basis of the design and just keep adding blocks until I got the size wanted (approx 90cm x105cm).

The front fabric is all from the first Denyse Schmidt range for Spotlight (Picnics and Fairgrounds).  As I was making it I kept cursing myself for not using a higher contrast range of fabrics so the piecing would be more visible.  There is a lot of piecing with Flying Geese!  However, I wasn't going to change halfway through and now that it is bound and finished, I actually like the busy look to it.  The backing fabric was on sale at Fabricworm a long time ago (Michael Miller?) and I bought it as the Mum loves elephants and I love red and pink together.

 As a link back to her parents Queen size quilt, I used left over fabric from that quilt for the squares in the corners - they kind of go with the rest of the quilt.

 I embroidered the label and I love it! No more printed labels for me.

10. Christmas presents

For Julians carers at Childcare (all 10 of them!), I decided to use this fantastic tutorial and make little zipper pouches for Christmas thank you gifts.  They were really simple to whip up - that is once I decided to put in all the zips first.  When I was trying to complete a pouch at a time, I was swapping needles from the zipper foot to the 1/4"seam foot and forgetting to change the needle position - it only took 3 broken needles to discover that I am not switched on enough in the evening to do this!

 

 

 I liked these so much that I decided to make them for my cousin-in-law (top left); Mum (bottom left) and sister-in-law (bottom right).  And for once, I made one for me (top right).  The little key-ring on the side allows me to clip it onto my work bag - now I will always be able to find my phone :)

 

 

9. Baby shower gift

A woman in my Mothers Group is about to have her second baby and we have decided to throw her a Baby Shower.  I decided to make her daughter and her new bub matching t-shirts as a gift.

She doesn't know what gender the baby is, so I have made them gender neutral.  I bought t-shirts from K-Mart and used Heat'nBond to do the applique.  Now on to deciding what fun games to play at the shower...