Mobile hearts

Don’t you love effective projects that are so easy, they could be done within minutes? Yes, me too.

While walking on the beach nearby my house, we came across a lot of dead wood and I thought it would be great to use some to hang something up in our room.

Coming back from the walk, I grabbed some leftover batting and fabric that I liked. On the fabric, I traced some heart shapes, sandwiched it with batting and fabric and sew inside the shape. I then simply cut where I traced the heart, leaving row edges.

In no time, I had this little mobile hearts up on the wall. It’s a great way to display your favourite fabric.

I’m sure it would look lovely in a little person’s bedroom too.

Linking up with Crazy mum quilt.

Three little boats sailing away to France

I have several friends with baby boys who are celebrating or about to celebrate their first birthday. We can’t be there for them but I thought I will make a little something for the boys to enjoy. Selecting boy-ish fabric isn’t too easy in my girly-girl fabric stash. However, I really wanted to use what I had so, I pulled out four different fabric and I think it works. The only thing I bought this time was 1m of ric-rac. I simply traced a simple boat on a piece of paper and used it as a template. Nothing difficult here.  I thought those tiny boats were too cute and could be used for a quilt block. I need to do a quilt boat now. Joinining them together, adding some polyester fiberfill and voila: I added an embroidery for my little cousin. His name is “Tom” so it was nice to add a life ring for the “O”. I loved how they turned out and I hope the three little boys will like them too.

Linking up with Crazy mum quilt and Diana Rambles.

Family soft toys for Nina

When we arrived in NZ, we were welcomed by friend’s of friends. They were so sweet, they welcomed us in their home for a couple of weeks and we stayed home-sitting their place during Christmas while they were away visiting family. We just had to take care of their (fat) cat. It helped us a great deal, so I wanted to created a little thank you gift.

Mum just sent me some of my embroidery floss and I had the idea to portray the family. I’m not so good at drawing but I wanted the little characters to look like the real ones. I transferred my drawing to a calico piece and chose a blue/green colour palette to coordinate everyone’s attire.

I sew around each character to create a small pocket and added some polyester fill in each family member. I love the 3D effect it gave.

Here is the entire family:

Of course, I had to create their house. The house actually works as a small pouch where the family can hide. The little pouch is quilted with simple straight lines to mimic the wooden panels.

I really enjoyed making this gift and it gave me so many ideas to create more soft toys.

Soft toys

I enjoy making quilts of course, but I also like playing with fabric to create little soft toys. I particularly like making them for baby gifts. Let me share two of my recent projects: a patchwork boat for a little boy and an embroidery portrait for a little girl:I didn’t use a specific pattern for the boat, just making it up as I went. For the little girl, I copied an existing embroidery. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep the source, if you recognise it, let me know and I will add it.

I think I like them equally, I find them very cute. I also embroidered the baby’s name on the back of each soft toys. Shame I don’t have more pictures. I quickly snap a picture just before going to the post office to send them away. While making them, I had so many more ideas and I can’t wait to do more and more.

Linking up at: