Pink and Orange Triangle Cot Bed Quilt

Also known as the sew I have both hated with a fire in my belly and adored at the same time! Anyone who has me on instagram will have seen me whinging about this thing as I have been going along in the last few weeks. 

Seriously, I have HATED sewing every inch of this quilt, it was long, boring, repetitive and monotonous, all those damn straight lines. I seriously don't know how avid quilters do it, though maybe I do, the whole thing felt like such a slog. But lets not be that down about shall we, because look at it! Its bloody stunning! 

I'm just going to keep going; I LOVE it! The finished thing has just been so worth all that effort that maybe I can see how quilters do it, they just probably have more time and patience than me, patience is not a thing I am known for. 

So, about the quilt. The pattern is a free pattern from See Kate Sew's website which includes full instructions and a pattern piece, so I will let you go read her post to find out how to make it. Her site was great at giving me all the details I needed, and the quilt comes out as a good cotbed size. Mine came out in slightly odd proportions to the bed, but its definitely big enough to function as a working full quilt as Miss Fox grows. 

The main pattern and flamingo fabric is a fat quarter bundle from Emma's Fabric Studio. I have used her bundles before and I love them. You get a nice amount of fabric and they come in some lovely combinations. The plain white, pink and orange are just sheeting cotton which I got from Dunelm and ebay. 

I adore the colour combo of this quilt. Pink and Orange are my absolute favourite. It sort of goes with the nursery, I maybe should have added more yellow, but it works. Its so vibrant and the colours really 'pop'. I have a friend to thank via instagram for adding more of the pink and orange, it definitely was a good plan, so thank you to her. 

The quilt batting is a lovely cotton batting which quilted brilliantly. It was an iron fix one which meant I could secure all the layers together before sewing to stop it sliding around. This is by far my preferred option than all the pinning, it just takes a lot of the worry out of the layers moving and sliding around. 

I also got to use some special quilting machine equipment on this quilt. I got a free quilting kit with my machine from Sew Essential so I made good use of the 1/4 seam foot, the extra large sewing plate table and of course the walking foot. All these things definitely eased the blow on this make and made things a little easier. But don't worry if you don't have all this, the only thing I would say is a must is the walking foot, but I think everyone should own one of these regardless, they have so many uses. 

So after all that hate will I make another? Well I am already thinking about making Master Fox one now he is in his big boy bed! I must be insane! 

Do you have any experience quilting? How do you find it? I'm desperate to hear from someone who does this a lot and enjoys it so can hopefully explain why they love it. Again, its probably just down to my lack of patience. 

The very hungry caterpillar baby sleeping bag

Baby sleeping bags the best and would be my number 1 recommendation to any new parent. I don't know how new they are but our lives changed once we got Master Fox into his first sleeping bag. One of the biggest problems we had with him at night when he was tiny (especially as he's a winter baby) was that he would wake as soon as you tried to put him back in the cot as he missed the warm temperature of your body and didn't like the cold sheets. Sleeping bags eliminate this completely as they keep all their snuggly heat inside their snuggly little sacks.  

This sleeping bag is made using the Lua Sleep Sack pattern which I bought as a PDF download from Straight Grain patterns. Its a lovely pattern and I really wish I'd bought this when Master Fox was a lot smaller so I could have got more use out of it, but never mind, I am sure there will be more people in my life having babies so we know what they are getting as a gift. It was a really pleasant sew, and the instructions were really clear. I really like the piping detail (and the excuse to get more practice with my hated piping foot) but this detail can left out and there is the option to not have the contrasting top panel.

I think it's the fabric that makes this sleeping bag so amazing though. We all love The very hungry caterpillar, its been a part of all of ours, and our children's lives and its just so iconic. I also love how clear the print is its just so fresh and eye catching.

The fabric has officially licenced hungry caterpillars on and comes from Makower studio. There are 10! different patterns in this collection so even the spotty section at the top of the bag is from the matching set. I bought mine from Ebay as it was the easiest place to find the patterns I wanted listed together but it is also stocked in other online stores. The lining is just some plain green cotton which I bought from my local fabric shop in Beeston and I added self cover buttons as they just look so much nicer on hand made items like this.

As you can imagine the sleeping bag is quilted. I wanted this to be a lighter weight quilt for the summer months as Master Fox has grown out of the last one so I bought some 100% cotton batting from Cotton Patch. Its lovely and soft, its thin but also warm and being 100% cotton it shouldn't get too warm in the hotter weather. I haven't actually quilted the sleeping bag just stitched the edges so I will have to report back after its been through the wash but fingers crossed it will be fine, I did pre-wash it.

I hope you like it, I LOVE it! Mr Fox is to thank for the fabric choice, I was going to go for some dinosaurs so I am really glad he picked this one instead, The very hungry caterpillar is his favourite book to read to little Master Fox.

Snuggly Baby Circus Blanket

So I am trying to ignore the little blip in posting that happened in August, but the truth is we were just so incredibly busy I don't think we had one weekend where we weren't off somewhere or had plans to do something. But one of the incredible things we did was to go and visit some friends over in Denmark.

Having played warcraft for such a long time its not really surprising we have got to know some of the people we play with really well after all these years (don't worry i'm not off on a tangent here, it will eventually link in to the post I promise!). We have been saying we should get ourselves to Denmark for years now, and what with the baby now on the way, and a couple of our friends having a newborn of their very own we decided it was now or never really. So off we went over bank holiday weekend for a few days in Copenhagen.

It was great to see our friends and even better to see their new little man Jamie. The one thing I really loved was, that in Denmark, you can buy quilts for baby's and they wrap up their little baby's like a sausage to get them to sleep, its so cute! But in Denmark they do leave their baby's outdoors to nap, even in their cold winters so they do need to be kept nice and snuggly.

This made me really want to make a cute little quilt cover for our little man when he arrives. Whilst on our free day out in Copenhagen being tourists Chris actually spotted one of their fabric shops and let me go in for a wander. It was amazing, they had so many good quility fabrics, I could have easily filled a suitcase and spent a fortune. However, as I could only really buy a little bit, I decided some fabric to make this quilt would be perfect and I should buy something I have never seen in the UK or on the internet... roll up, roll up this adorable circus print cotton (rabbits with mustaches, I mean why wouldn't you!).

I have managed to find the fabric shop online since, but sadly I don't understand a word of it so its very difficult to navigate. But I also haven't managed to find this fabric on the internet anywhere, which is sad as there were some seals with mustaches too and I want to try and get my hands on some of this as an afterthought (so if anyone has any clues PLEASE let me know).

Anyway on to the making of the blanket:

So coming back to the UK it turns out you can't buy quilts for babies younger than one year! We obviously have different regulations over here. This meant I had to rethink the whole idea so instead I decided to just make a nice soft snuggly blanket. Its made to pram blanket size (there is a great link on mothercare which tells you the standard measurements). I purchased some lovely soft spotted white minky fabric from ebay and cut out a piece of minky, a piece of the thinnest tog quilting batting and a piece of the cotton fabric to just bigger than 70x90cm.

The placing of the three layers to make sure they turned right side out boggled my brain a bit, it goes like this:
Batting
Cotton (pattern facing up)
Minky (outside facing down)

Then pin, and I mean pin! all the way around and sew a 3/4 seam around all 4 edges making sure you leave a gap big enough to turn the whole thing the right way out. Using a walking foot will make sewing the three layers significantly easier, but if you don't have one you can managed without just make sure you pin really well, sew slowly and make sure the foot is not down too tightly.

Turn the blanket right side out, poke out your corners, iron, pin down your opening seam and then sew a nice neat line all the way around the outer edge to keep the layers together and make the whole thing look pretty and neat.

There is a much better tutorial here: iCraft Minky Blanket Tutorial

It turned out really great. It's neat, I love the colours and best of all its so soft and comfy. I can't wait to wrap our little winter bundle up in it for a cuddle!

Lastly, to finish off this mammoth post you can have a token picture of that famous street in Copenhagen! There