A friend of ours recently gave birth to her second son. Because she already had all the baby stuff from her first son, I just asked her what DIY gift I could make. Turned out a mobile for Maxi Cosi would be useful and I got inspired by this white cloud mobile posted by the “Do Small Things with love” blog. Continue reading
This baby mobile was made to go with the colour block quilt we posted earlier this month.
From our experience, babies are more interested in mobiles that contain a combination of bold shapes and colours. Therefore we choose an easy star shape and decided to work with contrasting colours on each shape that are also used in the blanket. This way the quilt and mobile match well together and the baby is stimulated by the mobile (which benefits the parents as well). Continue reading
We made this colour block quilt for our good friend Laure’s little girl Anna. We decided to keep the patterns super simple (euhm, not less work intensive though) and work with bright colours. Our main inspiration was this ixxi ‘loco’ wall mural:
If you don’t know ixxi, check them out here: http://www.ixxidesign.com/ great budget friendly solutions to make a statement on a blank wall. I especially love the rijksmuseum plates design, but you have the choice of a wide variety of designs, or you can upload your own.
The inspiration sorted, the only thing left to do was make the actual quilt. Here’s a quick run through of materials and step by step of the process.
Really, we’ll use any excuse to start making something. But a new baby is definitely one of the better ones. When our friend Shirley told us she was having another baby we couldn’t wait to make something. For her firstborn we made this cute little cloud shaped mobile.
So now we had to pick something different (I secretly have to admit that mobiles are probably our favourite thing to make). Together with the proud new mum to be we picked out a fabric that would coordinate with the birth announcement card. She didn’t have a clue what we were planning to make, but it was fun being able to incorporate her in a part of the decision making process… We chose this gorgeous red apple fabric, for those of you living in Belgium, it’s part of the new Veritas line of crafting fabrics.
Woops, ignore the bad stitching
Then to decide what to do with it. We’ve made some quilts before, and I think it makes a lovely versatile gift: use it as a blanket, put it on the floor to play on, use it in a crib. So one of those was definitely on the list. Then we added some bibs, because Annelies is very good at making them (I still haven’t tried one) and well they’re super useful, obvious. So here’s the final gift:
Three cute and practical bibs
The cute ribbon detail was actually added to hide the bad finishing, but shhh
The finished quilt
Detail of the quilt
The whole finished lot, ready to wrap up
We’re pretty proud of this one!
Another one for our mobile series. Rather than using fabric or felt, this one is a bit more adventurous and uses paper craft. I’ve always had a bit of a thing for origami and the like: have a look at my pinterest board here for the work I’ve found inspiring so far.
So when I came across this tutorial to make the below paper air balloon on papermatrix, I didn’t have to think long to find someone to make one of these for.
The tutorial comes with a cutting file, which I assume you can use if you’ve got one of those fancy cutting machines. I forget the name. But since I didn’t have one of those machines I used plain old scissors. I have to say it’s probably preferable to have a fancy cutting machine (christmas present?), but in the end I got there!
I found it really satisfying to put the balloon together, it’s great to start seeing the pattern in your weaving, and once you get the hang of it it goes really fast. The gluing at the end is a bit less fun, very fiddly…
But the end result is definitely worth it. Hope you think so too!
Hello crafty people.
As promised here’s another project made from the Pezzy fabric collection from Moda! I wanted to make a mobile for my sister’s little one that fitted in with the overall theme she’d chosen: owls. Bang on trend, and how can you not love those cute little faces… (This is directed at my boss Jai, who loathes owls).
It actually took quite a bit of experimenting we the shape of the owl before I reached a result I was happy with, here’s some of the guys that didn’t make it through my stringent quality assurance process (yes, I said some of, I actually made more).
I’m very happy wit the shape I eventually settled for, and I think the little one appreciates it too!
As mentioned in one my previous posts (Fabric feature – Pezzy by American Jane) I have some projects to share that I made for gorgeous little Lilly, featuring the fabric form my last post: Pezzy by American Jane at Moda.
I’ve made two projects using this fabric. The one which I’ll share today is a little cot quilt inspired by a tutorial over at sew mama sew: http://sewmamasew.com/blog2/2010/10/october-11-crayon-box-quilt-tutorial-winter-peach-giveaway/
I loved this pattern from the moment I saw it, nice and easy for my inexperienced quilting hands, but also simply beautiful with the rhythmic triangle pattern. I enjoyed the process of making it and putting it altogether, and I spent a bit more time actually quilting this one than I did the last (Baby quilt), not too bad for my second quilt. Maybe on the next one I’ll venture into hand quilting!
Here’s some pictures for the work in progress and one more of the finished thing, hope you love the end results as much as I do!
I made this little mobile for one of my friend’s who’s just had her first baby. I saw some similar projects online, and since these are made out of felt, they’re really easy and quick to do. The result is a very cute (if I say so myself) baby mobile! Read on for the instruction on how to make your own…
My post comes a bit late in the day, I’ve just come back from a long weekend in Belgium to celebrate my birthday (on the 1st of April, you know what that means…). I had a great time catching up with friends and I received some lovely presents (the main one being a brand new shiny sewing machine, more on that later).
So with all that celebrating combined with the glorious weather the past few days, I haven’t been very busy this week making things. The project I’ll share with you today then is a little baby quilt I made a while ago, almost a year in fact, for the first baby to arrive in our circle of friends. It’s more or less the project that made me discover how much I liked crafting, so it’s a very special one for me.
My boyfriend Tom’s granny was an avid quilter. Unfortunately I never met her, I would have loved to have a chance to talk to her about her work. She created an amazing collection of quilts for family, friends and charity. I’m so lucky to have one of these at home, and to be able to admire a few more of them at Tom’s parents’ place.
So it only made sense to devote a series of posts to this great lady and her work. Continue reading