Happy Girl's Day

In Japan they tend to have the most obscure "days". My brother who lives and works in Japan, tells me about "Family Day" and "Beach Day" and then there is "Golden Week" where the whole country stops and celebrates. What a wonderful idea!

According to the interwebs, Girls Day ...

On this day families with young daughters celebrate this event at home to ensure their daughter's future happiness. That is, they decorate hina-Ningyo (special, beautiful dolls which are replicas of an ancient emperor and empress and their subordinates).

Zakka Life posted yesterday on "Happy Girls Day" so I thought it a good excuse to post a pick of my little girl (again!). She seems so huge now that we have Nicholas, her hands, her feet. I am sure that she has had a growth spurt in the last few weeks as nothing seems to fit her anymore.

I am hoping that next week I will have some energy to do some sewing, I have so many things to finish and so many ideas to play around with in my sketchbook.

The promise of summer

With the weather report saying that the temperatures are going to go up over 20 at the end of the week the promise of summer is around the corner.

I found these picture from last year's visit to the Collingwood Childrens Farm.

For someone so small, Victoria is never afraid of animals.

The first Sunday of each month they have a family day with free pony rides from 10.30 - 2.30pm. On the second Saturday of each month there is a Farmers Market.

Sleeping Blanket for Childcare

Quite a while back my Mum gave me a cotton waffle blanket for Tori. I decided to customise the waffle blanket by unstitching the satin binding and replacing it with some striking cotton bias. In order to give the bias some more structure, I ran a few lines of stitching along the bias.

I had a meter of this yummy Michael Miller Night Owl fabric that Tori liked, so we made a matching bag for her blanket. I had a strip of green cotton left over from some of my Kona Colour Jelly Rolls that I used for the draw string.

I appliqued some owls onto the blanket and made name tags for her blanket and bag. It only dawned upon me this afternoon when I was trying to get Tori to nap that I hadn't documented what I had made ... so here it is!

Play Quilt: Making that corner

I left this block until last. The concept of it terrified me! Lines I am good at but curved bits I tend to stuff up.

I got some paper, drew my 3 x 3 2 inch blocks out and then made the outside corner line from one of Tori's dinner plates. I then measured the width of 2 inches around the bend and then voila! Presenting my template ....

Pinned to the material, I trimmed the material 1/4 of an inch from the template. Not sure where pattern piece "C" is, I suspect that the cat or child ran off with it. I will probably retrace these pieces onto cardboard with the seam allowance (or buy a patchwork template).

Rather than use the green fabric for the corner, I had a scrap of "space" fabric which fitted in quite well.

Overall pretty pleased with my first attempt at a cornered piece. With the inside edge I ran a stay stitch along both bits of fabric. It worked well, but I found the edge without the stay stitch was easier to work with.

Getting there! I am feeling rather confident with my 4 piece corner and now I am wondering where else I can use it!

Feeling unproductive and hot

It is both fortunate and unfortunate that my sewing room is at the front of the house. On lovely days I can gaze out to my garden as I cut out things on my ironing board. But on 30 degree plus days, it gets hot ... very hot, even with the blinds drawn. Once introduce a hot iron to a room that is already warm, it heats up quick.

So on Saturday we ended up seeking refuge in one of the many shopping centres with underground parking. I figured that if I had to do shopping, it should be in air conditioned comfort.

Someone liked the fact that Nanna met up with us and fed us chippies ...

But at the end of the day we were far too exhausted to even take the cracker out of our top before collapsing in the car seat on the way home.

Hays Paddock

Tori and I had a play-date yesterday at Hays Paddock. I was thinking, small playground somewhere, sounds like fun!

Hays Paddock is bigger than the death star with slides, swings, sand pits and wild children running and screaming everywhere! What an adventure! This playground is the destination for many mothers groups ...

We had lots of fun!

A Blanket for Tori (Part 1)

My daughter attends childcare two days a week and she has recently been moved into the toddlers room. At nap time, all the kids go and get their "sleep blankets" and then settle down for their naps. We had one of these light green cotton comfort blankets kicking around at home from when she was a baby, so she has been using this. At the end of the nap, the kids stuff the blanket back into the pillow slip that it lives in and then they go back to their lockers.

Feeling that the blanket was a bit daggy and "baby like", and not wanting to food the bill for a new blanky, I decided to take off the satin trim and replace it with something a little more funky.

I had some quarters from the moda "spooktacular" range that I bought from spiceberrycottage on etsy. Technically the print is part of a halloween range, but I wanted something that would go with the green, but not took too wishy washy.

We decided on the black with orange and green dots. Although the greens are not the same colour, they tend to blend at the size that they are. From the 25cm of fabric that I had, I could cut 5 lengths of a 3 1/2 inch sash which was enough to go around the cotton blanket. I then pressed them in half and then attached to one side. Pinned and then hand stitched the other side.

Once I was happy with the "look" of it, I attached the other sides to the blanket. The corners are not sexy, but will do!

Hopefully TV time tomorrow will result in a finished blanket, then it is onto Part 2 of my "Blanket for Tori" project.