Archive / Gifting

Herringbone Baby Quilt

2016 is THE year of babies. A number of friends are expecting their little ones’ arrivals this year and boy, Christmas gatherings this year will be festive indeed!

One of the first baby quilts for 2016 is pretty special to me. This was a special collaboration between Aimee (Pins and Needles) and I – where she did the long arm quilting and I pieced the quilt top and finished the hand-sewn binding.

We put together this quilt for a mutual friend who has always been a great help when it comes to sourcing fabrics and sewing notions for us locally. Her baby boy arrived in March and we had completed this quilt by then (usually the quilt comes WAY after the baby is born).

I picked the herringbone quilt layout which has been on my to-make list for a very long time. I wanted to try a layout using the half-square triangle method. For more information, you can refer to the tutorial to the beautiful ombre herringbone quilt here.

The quilt is for a boy and I know some people would insist on Blue-for-Boy and Pink-for-Girl kind of themes. But I prefer to add in hints of pinks for boys and tone it down when it comes to girl quilts. Why? Because a baby’s colour palette should be more inclusive. And actually I love the blacks in this quilt too!,

Aimee quilted this baby quilt on her Handi Quilter Infinity using the computerized stitch pattern. I love the letters and numbers motifs. The quilting balances the more ‘modern’ quilt layout with the nursery charm of a baby quilt. She used King Tut variegated threads here and it shows up beautifully on the Kona Cotton Snow fabric.

When using the half-square triangle method for chevron or herringbone patterns, I prefer to use non-direction accent fabrics such as dots and I would avoid lines and stripes as I wanted the angled pieces to appear seamless, not pieced.

A simple label to personalise this special baby quilt.

Etsy Store Update + Year End Sale Coupon!

It’s been a while since I have updated the store. Husband has been kind enough to take some shots of the items when playing around with his camera. 😀

Christmas really comes early this year as we have already packed and given away our 1st gifts (teachers & classmates).

And to get you started on your christmas shopping, here’s a 10% off coupon code (Yes! Including Olfa items): xmas2011

Valid till 31 December 2011 and applicable for all items listed on Etsy.

// Zipper Pouches //

// Premium Grade Lavender Sachets //

aarrrrgggghhhhh….. to rip or not to rip????

The new I Spy baby quilt is simply NOT working out for me. I bought this softbook panel a long time ago. But decided that it was too big and flimsy to be a good soft book, although it would probably make a great I Spy quilt instead.

I took a long time cutting and piecing the quilt, and another good few months before I sandwiched the quilt. I got the quilting done ONLY because I needed to free up some space in my WIP drawer. So, its a ‘difficult’ quilt for me since the start.

Benji loves the quilt and had a great time reading the text and ‘spying’ the images. But he declared it as ‘TOO SMALL’ for his bed. My son loves big quilts that have generous overhang. Sigh…

The ultimate blow was when I realised that the binding was a real hot mess – fabric is from Sevenberry – and even after 5 rounds of Synthrapol treatment, the binding could not be saved (although I got the reds from the main quilt out).

Now, I’m wondering if I should simply rip out the binding or leave it as-is???

Handmade wedding favours

MamaG & Chris are very good friends of the family. And we were really happy for them when they told us they were getting married in July. Although we could not travel to France for their summer wedding celebrations, we are glad that we could be a part by helping with their wedding favours for the event.

The couple decided on personalised, double-sided napkins that the guests would use and bring home as keepsake at their wedding luncheon.

The napkins were professionally embroidered with the couple’s name and wedding date.

The napkins were made with my stash of Essex cotton-linen and Amy Butler’s Diasy Chain collection purchased from Needle and Thread.

I have enough fabrics left over to put together a table topper, though i wish I had more time to stitch down the binding by hand instead of machine.

I’m really glad to be part of the wedding with the construction of the favours. And I’m definitely looking forward to sewing for their little ones in the future too! 😉

And closer to home, my sister got married earlier this year after months of preparation. As the wedding lunch was a cosy affair, the couple wanted to do something special for the guests. We made lovely lavender sachets filled with high grade french lavender buds, and sewn with custom-printed fabrics by Spoonflower and patches from my stash.

7 years ago, when we had our wedding celebrations, I was not sewing yet – so no such goodies for our own guests. But we tried to put our personal touch wherever we could like commissioning an illustration of both of us which we put on our custom-design/printed invite cards, church wedding programme booklet, dinner menu (we included a foreword explaining why we were not serving shark’s fin soup, since it is ALMOST a tradition to serve the dish at every Chinese wedding banquets), even stickers!

At the wedding dinner, we gave away candies that we ordered from Roc Candy in Australia. I realise that we didn’t have a good shot of the candy (all our wedding photos were shot on film!) but I found it on Roc’s website – although I remembered that the colour of the ‘rind’ was multi-colour, instead of green. I think. 😀

I guess I will be sewing baby gifts next for my friends? 😀

Luke – The quilt

This is my “Luke Quilt” that was requested by a good friend last year. I delivered some goodies to her first and then went on to drag my feet for another 12 months before I finished the quilt for ‘not-so-baby-now Luke’.

This baby quilt – a single Log Cabin block, is a huge 50″ square that took about 2 solid days of quilting that my left my arms aching quite a bit. The puffiness of some of the sections here are due to the fact that it came out of the dryer in the morning and I left it folded until I took the shots.

I used some of my precious Japanese fabrics that we hand-carried back to Singapore, and also Denyse Schmidt’s lovely prints. It has ‘Lego-like’ bricks, space shuttles, transportation prints and lots of dots, stripes and plaids.

For the back, I pieced the left-over prints from the front with Kona Essex Linen – Solid White. The white linen really showed off the variegated quilting thread that I used on this quilt.

According to the mummy, Luke took this quilt to bed the very night I delivered it to their home.

Wishing you many sweet dreams with this quilt, Luke!