Early Bird Challenge and Other Finishes

This morning started out with a big frost and we are expecting more very cold mornings this week.  The best thing is that the days are usually then nice. So, today we decided to have sausage sangers for lunch.  I love coming here for lunch, and it is so close to home.

This is actually our front yard.  There is a stand of big old yellow box just down from our house, so we included them in our yard and leave it all ‘au natural’.  And, of course, all trees need an old header rotting away.  We were lucky enough to find this one at a clearing sale for next to nothing years ago, and it looks the part.  You will notice that Biggles is never too far away when there is food involved.

It was nice enjoying our billy tea in front of the remains of the fire.

Now for some more finishes.

Judith challenged us as part of the Early Bird Christmas Crafting to create a gift from two fat eighths of fabric and whatever embellishments we like.  Straight away I knew what I would make, a sewing companion, like I have made a couple of times before.  But, do you think I can find the pattern.  Not on your Nellie.  The annoying thing is that I saw it just recently.  Maybe this is telling me something!

Now my mind was a blank as to what to make, so I decided to go off on a slightly different tangent and see how many mini gifts I could make from two fat eighths.  I decided to use two coordinating pretty blues.

This is what I managed to get out of them.

 

I started off with the tissue cover in the middle.  This time, rather than use a press stud, I made a loop of hat elastic (very handy that lots of swing tags on clothes now come on hat elastic – throw nothing away) and use a pretty button.  Now that I look at it, I could have made it much prettier, but I know that for next time. It has the contrast stripe on the inside.

I think I got carried away on the mini handbag lavender bags doing tiny colonial knots in single strand on the baby ric rac, but it looks super cute.

Now to add buttons.  I needed a pretty pink button for one of the handbags.  I have accumulated several button jars and tins, but couldn’t find a pretty pink button.  Funnily, I seem to have hardly any pink buttons.  Also, try and find a button in all those jars and tins.  So, I decided to do something about it (and waste half the afternoon yesterday). 

Now that looks better.

I just have to find somewhere to put the jars.

My precious buttons are still in their jars, all mixed up.

Still no pretty pink button, so as we had to duck into town to visit Mum and Dad, we called into Spotlight and bought one.  How sad is that!

Anyway, back on track.  The little note book cover was based on Bloom’s great tutorial and the little luggage tag lavender bag is just something I made up to use the remaining scraps.  I quite like the way it turned out.  I still have this much  left and I reckon I should be able to make some other little something with it. We'll see.

I have a couple of other mini gifts to share as well.  A friend our ours is due to have her first baby on Christmas Eve, so I made a couple of pairs of cloth baby shoes.  They are so very cute.  Her Mum collects frogs, so they are appropriate and I just love the way the little red pair turned out.  I used a tutorial on the Michael Miller website.

A few years ago I had a few girlfriends around and showed them the basics of patchwork and we all made a table runner which used quite a few techniques. From the scraps from that day I made these coasters using Tazzie Quilts tutorial for my friend Cath, as she loves the rich colours and they will match her runner she made on the day.

So, here are all the mini gifts I have made for the month of June. I must say that I’m rather pleased with what I have achieved.  Judith’s challenge was just what I needed.  I don’t know who they all will go to, but they can be little stocking stuffers, or for those unexpected occasions.  Also, all the fabric is from the stash, which is a bonus.

I will note that a lot of these weren’t on my list in my journal and several that I did have listed haven’t been made, but that doesn’t matter.

I’m looking forward to next month’s project now.