It's Brit Quilt Swap time...

I probably should have done this post yesterday to give those Brits amongst you that wanted a chance to sign up to do so (sorry, sign up closed today).

I'm excited to hear who I'm going to be sewing for and see what amazing piece (no pressure there!) my secret partner comes up with for me.

Here's the mosaic I constructed to give my partner a feel for my likes at the mo but please head here for all the links to these stunning pieces as I forgot to save them to post here.

Other participants have posted some fantastic treasuries and it's going to be lots of fun following what everyone is up to.

Keep an eye on it all too here... 

 Today has been so lovely and so unusual in so many ways.

Today we had no plans whatsoever.

Today we got to just hang out and see where the day took us.

Ruby decided early on that the day was going to take us to a baking session.

She was quite right when she said we hadn't done this for ages.

We soon rectified that and a short stroll later up to the shops to buy supplies and we were perfectly equipped for such a sesh.

Yesterday, with an equally rare Friday off I pulled out my recently bought Noodlehead Go Anywhere Bag pattern and set to work on making me a bag.

I delved into my saved-for-something-special Lotta Jansdotter Echo stash and made myself a bag.

This bag is just perfect. Perfect handle length, perfect sized inside pocket (customised to hold my favourite pen, iphone and old-lady-can't-leave-the-house-without-specs) and perfectly sized without everything lost inside. 

Our unplanned day today was also taken up with making a Noodlehead bag for Ruby, who decided she also was needing such a bag.

I reduced the size a little to make it 10 year old friendly, but still with the requisite customised for-when-Mummy-finally-buys-me-a-phone pocket.

Socialising and plans can be so over-rated. 

I haven't enjoyed a Saturday so much in ages.

I hope you have had an equally lovely Saturday.

Friday already?? Where on earth has this week gone??!

I have no idea what happened to Monday and Tuesday, but Wednesday and Thursday I was in London at the NOTHS Meet Up, which was fab.

It is always wonderful to meet up with virtual friends and when you are listening to inspirational talks and given a free lunch, then all the better!

 I am consequently left today feeling rather pooped to put it mildly and politely!

I have just about enough energy to show you my Bella cushion created from the other half of the charm pack.

 Again, I kept it simple and let the little pieces I had shout from the rooftops.

Man, I love these fabrics!

The colours, the designs, the whole combo is just way too perfect. I've a feeling I'm going to be buying whole bolts of this range!

I finished off the cushion making an envelope backing in a bright turquoise solid.

Looking at it I could almost convince myself that the rain isn't lashing down and my heating isn't on and it really is summer time here in the UK...

 It is no secret that I am a huge fan of Lotta Jansdotter. Her simplistic , fresh, Scandinavian style ticks all boxes as far as I am concerned.

She shook the world when her first line Echo for Windham fabrics hit our shelves last year and I am predicting an even bigger world shake up when her next line Bella arrives in August.

I was lucky enough to be sent a charm pack of Bella and let me tell you, it sure has the wow factor. I am going to stick my neck out here and say I may actually prefer it to Echo.

Maybe it's the colour combos that Bella comes in or may it's that the patterns aren't quite as bold individually so work really well when adding to projects.

Because a charm pack isn't the biggest pack on the block I had to team it with other fabrics and because I wanted to showcase Bella in all it's glory i decided to team it with coordinating solids (in this case some lovely Klona cottons), rather than any other prints.

I split the charm pack up into 2 groups and used the orange and cobalt blue pieces in this quilt, saving the greys, yellow and turquoise for my second project which you can see a glimpse of in the bottom photo below.

Again, trying to keep it simple, I backed my Bella quilt in a denim coloured cotton and bound it in my new orange stripe fabric, which actually was born from a desire for an orange stripe to bind it with!

I for one can not wait for this line to be released and having had a play with a few precious pieces I am very excited about having more to really go for it with.

If you want to read more about this line and how Lotta creates her designs go for an informative read here.

And watch this space for what I am doing with the other pieces...

 It's been a hellava week this week. One that can be basically be described as a bit of a post celebration blur.

I'll post about the amazing weekend we had at another time, when I can put into words what we all went through and when I've picked myself up off the floor from exhaustion. 

I don't remember Sam's flooring me quite so much, but I think that's a lot to do with us being out of routine this week with the extra Bank Holidays and Half Term. If we had been back to routine the next day we would have had no choice but to get on with it.

We spent most of this week sleeping late, saying farewell to visiting family and friends and generally living in the moment.

By the time Matthew went back to work yesterday we were finding it tricky to get out of our slump.

I dived into the cellar to get some printing done for some orders that were piling up and as is my normal trick started playing around with an idea that had been forming in amongst the blur.

As you know i normally print in colour on white fabric but wanted to give printing on some colours a go.

This ended up with me printing on a fair few of my solids and rather liking where it was going. The main reason behind this was the need to order more magnets and deciding that perhaps they would look better with more colour.

I've put up a couple of pics here to get a feel of the difference.

What do you reckon? Printing on solids or printing on white?

I'm rather liking how the solids look coupled with other fabrics. The design seems to stand out better, particularly with the blues, but on the other hand the postage stamp block seems to work with the print on white.

Maybe I'm too tired this week to make a decision or maybe there is a place for both.

Do you have an opinion? Would you like to see more designs on a coloured background?

Would love to know what you think. You are probably less tired than I am...unless of course you are recuperating from FQR...

It's a big weekend in the UK this weekend...

From a national point of view it is Jubilee Weekend so the nation is in a frenzy, with bunting flags decorating absolutely everywhere. I am not what you would call a Royalist, but I do get excited by mass fervour.

On an ever so slightly smaller scale lots of people are getting excited about The Fat Quarterly Retreat this weekend. Unfortunately due to our very own exciting event I can't make that but can not wait to hear all about it.

 We are almost 24 hours from kick off from Noah's Bar Mitzvah. The boys' exams finished today, my aunt and uncle arrived from the US and all finishing touches are just about completed.

I even managed to squeeze in making a very important quilt this week, finishing it off today...

I am quite well aware that this was a crazy time to start a quilt but it was a very special quilt. Noah's Bar Mitzvah teacher and his wife had their first baby last week and I wanted to say a big thank you for all the amazing support Alby has given Noah and an even bigger thank you to baby Arielle for arriving early and enabling her Daddy to be with Noah on Saturday during his big performance. So it was a top priority to finish it.

And finished it is...complete with scrappy binding as I couldn't make a decision quickly enough which fabric to use, so used all 4, including my hoarded last bit of Mikodesign owl fabric.

I think, like a lot of us, I may be a little busy this weekend, but I hope you all have a fantastic extra long weekend and as a very good friend of mine says...see you on the flip side x

 Next party preparation item ticked off the agenda...

 ...table runners for the kitchen and deck tables.

One thing this party sure is doing is kicking me into touch with projects for the house that have been on the To Do list for aeons.

Yesterday was a very productive screen printing day. With the weather being so beautiful I was able to print, dry the screen and reprint in a different colour far faster than usual.

This left me a little window of opportunity to print up a couple of table runners.

I bought this beautiful pale blue linen in ready made table runner width from Ikea last year (that's how long I've been waiting to make these). Unfortunately it is now discontinued which makes me exceedingly cross I didn't buy the whole darn bolt.

The combination with the white ink is really pleasing and I am so cross about not having more as matching napkins would have gone down a treat.

If you do happen to be in your local Ikea and if by some miracle they have some still in stock, please do let me know and I may even make you a set to say a big thank you ;-)