Amsterdam

Last Friday me and my friend Caroline went on a day trip to Amsterdam. It's a little under an hour by train from our hometown of Rotterdam. Our first stop was the Stedelijk Museum. At the moment they have a great Matisse exhibition on, called 'The Oasis of Matisse'.  In the afternoon we did a little shopping. We always visit the Kitsch Kitchen store  on the Rozengracht when we're in Amsterdam. They have lots of oilcloth and pretty, colourful homewares. Another favourite spot to shop is Exota/King Louie in the Hartenstraat, vintage and retro style clothing. I bought a Panda Bear dress in the sale :)

Birdblocks Quilt Shop, photo taken from their website as I forgot to take a photo...

We were on our way back to the train station, when we found a great little Quilt/Fabric store on the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal 99 called Birdblocks. Quilt shops over here tend to be fairly traditional (think 'beige' and 'batik') and, quite honestly, a bit scary to visit. Birdblocks on the other hand is a shop where you feel welcome. It has a great selection of mostly modern fabric designs. I picked up a few fat quarters: a versatile lettering print, super cute Tula Pink Deer fabric and Heather Ross' Unicorn fabric in green from the reprint of the 'Far Far Away' line. I mostly buy my fabric online (not much lately though!) but it's so nice to be able to see the colours and prints in real life before you buy. Especially in such a friendly place. I'll definitely try and visit Birdblocks again, next time I'm in Amsterdam!

Lovely (handmade) gifts

Just at the end of 2014 I received a lovely package full of goodies, including this wonderful hand stitched brooch my friend Sami made for me! I'm wearing it today but thought this old book was a better backdrop for a photo than my wrinkled cardigan. It wasn't a swap technically as both me & Sami just (without knowing we were planning to) sent each other a few goodies around Christmas time. :)

I don't do many swaps anymore as they always stress me out a bit but I had much fun with the &Stitches Bloggers Secret Santa swap. Rebecca sent me an amazing package with a fabulous pouch (Polar Bear from Sophie's fab Stitch the Halls book!) and a very pretty pieced mug rug (a.k.a glass of white wine rug). Rebecca's package also included lots of different M & M varieties, which my daughters loved. Over here you can only buy the chocolate and peanut M & M s.... Rebecca has a post featuring the whole loot on her blog!

I sent a Moomin Snorkmaiden drawstring bag with goodies to Julie. I adapted one of the Sublime Stitching Moomin patterns to make it look more winter-y.

My bestie Caroline went to Japan and brought me heaps & heaps of fabric, including this super cute animal print. No idea what the owl is on about but I'm sure it's something nice. :)

My Trip to London

I had a great time in London last weekend! After dropping off my suitcase at the hotel Friday morning I headed to Earl's Court which was the Tube station nearest to my hotel. Since I read Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere I can never view the London Underground in the same way again and many of the Tube Stations and the famous 'Mind the Gap' phrase have a special connotation to me now. If you like (urban) science fiction than you should definitely check it out, especially if you are traveling to London.

Anyway, I was meeting my friend Sami at Earl's Court and we went on a quest to find Shaukat Fabrics. A store that is supposed to be like an Aladdin's Cave of Liberty Fabrics, some even say bargains can be found there. Well there was a lot of Liberty Fabric there, that's for sure, a bit overwhelming actually! I was really excited when I found the stacks of remnant fabrics. Sami and I went through the stack where all pieces cost 1 pound each, and I dug up a really lovely fabric (the white with flowers). The 2 and 5 pound stack was more impressive and there's where I found the other fabrics. The larger pieces were about a quarter of a metre and cost 5 pound. Reasonably priced but not exactly super-bargains.

Later that day Sami and I met up with Sophie (of What Delilah Did) and we went to see an interesting exhibition called 'Making Colour' in the National Gallery. After that we sat in a park (not sure which one) and talked lots, because that's something you do in parks rather than museums. :) We also managed to squeeze in a quick visit to Liberty where I found this fabulous patchwork deer. Saturday I went to the &Stitches Picnic in Hyde Park and I wrote a little bit about that on the &Stitches blog yesterday. I had quite a lot of time for myself on Sunday and visited the Victoria & Albert Museum where I saw some beautiful embroidered garments and textiles. Especially the Chinese Silk Embroideries were very impressive. 

I received some fabulous gift over the weekend like these two pendants. The one on the left was made by Sami in her signature blackwork-on-Liberty- fabric-style. The one on the right was stitched by Sophie (from &Stitches) and the odd thing was that the motif almost exactly matched that of the dress I was wearing on the day she gave me the pendant! 

It was great to spend a few days in one of my favourite cities again and I felt very lucky to have such wonderful company during my time in London. Thanks friends!

p.s. I totally forgot to mention Pigeon Steve-with-the-Leaf who joined us at the &Stitches picnic. Definitely will write about him in the future as I'm planning to embroider a Steve the Pigeon Portrait :)

On the side

Between fine tuning and hosting the Furry Nice Class, birthdays and a lot (like: really A LOT) of school free days and school holidays between mid April and mid May it's hard to find time for 'fun' projects but I'm trying to squeeze in one nevertheless... This project is quite small, worked with two threads (instead of my usual one-thread-only-for-furry-stitching-policy) and a lot of fun to do.

You can properly view the end result in a few weeks time but I can reveal it has something to do with Alyssa Thomas' new fabric line Here Kitty Kitty which is not out until May.

Here Kitty Kitty features some seriously cute cat and crafty inspired designs and if you're quick you can pre-order a Fat Quarter Bundle and get two free embroidery patterns and a quilt pattern as well! (this offer ends the 22nd of April ) Sounds like a great deal to me :)

In other stitchy news: on the &Stitches blog we are hosting a fun embroidery swap. This is actually the last day you can sign up so go and check out the details here quickly.

Liberty Bird

Last week I wrote about my plans of stitching a Tiny Tufted Titmouse. Making these animal portraits is a bit like a treat to me, there's no pressure and no deadline and no writing down of colours and stitches and not much of a plan either...

Anyway,  I suddenly thought it might be fun to stitch it on a really pretty, flowery fabric. Lately I have only used cotton satin fabric for my tiny animal portraits. Cotton Satin is a medium weight fabric with a close weave and perfect for embroideries with lots of tiny stitches. Then I found this scrap of gorgeous Liberty Fabric in my stash which is really is not very suitable for my type of stitching at all. The fabric is quite thin and I can hardly see what I'm doing with that busy print but the embroidery is turning out rather charming so far. I really like how the bird seems to emerge from the flowers. Now I'm tempted to do more of these 'Liberty' birds after I have finished this one!

Busy week & some great purchases

It has been a busy week here: my oldest daughter turned 13 (and her bike got stolen). My husband went to Norway to attend one of the last concerts of this band and I finished a (rather lovely!) project for a book and send it off to where it needed to go. Which is why blogging took a back seat last week but I'm here now because I wanted to share some great recent purchases with you.

The big photo in the collage above is from Lucie Summer's book Quilt Improv. I usually go for the classic quilts and quilt blocks and Improv Quilting is a really different approach. I haven't had a chance to read through all the projects yet, quite honestly the font that is used in this book makes it hard for me to read it in the evening, but I'm really inspired to try the different techniques Lucie describes in her book. Lucie's quilts are modern and colourful and I love the bold, geometrical shapes. The freehand cutting of a quarter circle I read about in the book sounds like a proper challenge though. I don't think I will try that on my new Heather Ross fabric (pictured bottom right)!

Since shipping costs from the US to Europe went up dramatically (I think I already moaned about that a couple of times here on the blog) I tend to buy more fabric in one purchase but far less often. Obviously I need to choose wisely when I do buy and I think I did well this time! I bought a stack of Heather Ross' latest fabric line Briar Rose and (how sensible!) a bunch of Sketch FQ's as well. Briar Rose does not disappoint, it has a lovely soft feel to it and I'm especially smitten with the Hex Bee and the Cricket Clover print.

I purchased all fabric in the Westwood Acres shop on Etsy, where I also spotted this FQ bundle. Lush is back and I have a hard time resisting those 'paint-by-number' deers and birds. Another re-release I'm ogling is Belle by Amy Butler. Especially the wallpaper-y prints. I'm still hoping that Katie Jump Rope by Denyse Schmidt one day will be re-released too, I'd buy the 'Bow' fabric in all colours... Which line of fabric would you like to see back on the (virtual) shop shelf?

Wonky Supernova Quilt Bee Block

I don't often blog about the quilt blocks I make for the Quilt Bee I'm in. Sometimes I struggle a bit with getting the blocks done in time and often I'm in such a hurry to send them off (as I am a s-l-o-w bee) that I don't even make time to makes photos of the blocks I made. Anyway I was so pleased with the block I made today that I thought I'd share it here.

This month Elisabeth gave us free reign with our blocks. We can send her any quilt block in any size, we just need to do them all in a blue/teal and white or cream colour scheme. I took the fabric I had designed earlier this year as starting point.

On the Bijou Lovely blog I found the perfect block for my Tap dancing Polar Bear. It was simply called Wonky Star but I'm calling it Wonky Supernova! :)  There isn't really a tutorial for this block but it was simple enough to figure out how to make one. I know 'wonky' blocks are not for everyone but I had fun sewing this block which requires very little measuring and looks great finished.

Fat Quarterly Retreat London 2013 (2)

English Paper Piecing with Katy

(Find part one of my Fat Quarterly Retreat recap here)

On Saturday I first attended a stamp carving class with Tacha. I had no idea I had so little talent for this particular craft. I'm not sure if I can blame my headache (which sadly lasted all day) but the result (a wonky owl with one eye) was not great to say the least... Maybe I will try stamp carving again in the privacy of my own home ;)

In the afternoon I had an English Paper Piecing class called Triangle City with Katy. There was lots of chatting and giggling during that session. I forgot to bring paper templates and after the one and half hour session only managed to sew a rectangle on a hexagon.  I have made some more progress in the past few days though! When it's finished it should look something like this.

In the evening there was a 'Quilt Market', where attendees and professional shops had stalls with handmade goodies and fabric. It was hard to restrain myself from buying lots, especially from the fabulous selection of the Eternal Maker! I bought some Liberty Fat Quarters (check out how they folded it in a star shape) from Fabrics Galore and Echino and Melody Miller from the Eternal Maker. Later that evening there was a raffle but unfortunately I didn't win.

After a good night's sleep (and a fabulous cappucino and brioche from nearby bakery Paul) I went to Brioni's Cathedral Windows Class. The great thing about Cathedral Windows is (once you know how to ingeniously fold your fabric and sew it together) that you end up with a finished quilt!

Brioni's awesome Cathedral Window Quilt

Not sure if there is a whole Cathedrals Window Quilt in my future but surely I can manage a cushion cover or a wallhanging or something? Again I was quite slow but was happy to have learned a new technique. Brioni was very patient with me and a great teacher. I'm looking forward to her book (about using pre-cuts like jelly rolls etc) that is out soon!

In the afternoon, Carina and I met up with Sami and Julie and the four of us embroidered and chatted together in the garden of the Victoria & Albert Museum. That was such a lovely get together that I'm a little sad I don't live closer to these ladies so we can do this on a regular basis...

I almost forgot to mention the lovely goodie bag (thank you sponsors!) we received at the start of the Retreat! It was a Liberty bag filled with lovely goodies like fabric, thread and haberdashery and you will find a nice overview here. Over the weekend I received some more treats: a cool Irish themed headband from John (Quiltdad) for when I'm out running, yummy candy from Carina and lovely Hedgehog socks from Julie! Thank you all so much!

Another lovely surprise was this embroidery that Ann brought to the Retreat to show me. It's from my Apple Tree pattern and I think she did a great job and I got all teary eyed when I saw it. :)

Fat Quarterly Retreat London 2013 (1)

                                                    Confusion at Liberty photo by Catrin of I'd Rather Sew

I arrived at London City Airport early Friday morning for this year's edition of the Fat Quarterly Retreat. I was very thankful that I could get into my hotel room early because the 45 minute Tube journey was warm to say the least. So after cooling down a bit I then met up with Carina and we headed to  Liberty  to attend a talk about Liberty Fabrics! There was *some* confusion about where the room was where we were supposed to be so the whole group of 30 (?) women climbed stairs, descended stairs, went outside, went inside again, saw the Liberty Mail room, climbed some more stairs, you get the idea... I think the photo, where you see me on the back at the delivery entrance, says it all. But we got there in the end. :)

The Liberty talk was fabulous. We heard about where the inspiration for the collections of the past years came from and a bit about the history of Liberty fabrics too. Obviously things are well recorded now but about some of the fabrics and designers in the late 19th and early 20th century not all details are clear. Nowadays Liberty regularly works with established artists, like Grayson Perry and Lauren Child, but also with talented art students on their fabric collections.

I loved the many examples of how old Liberty motifs are cleverly transformed into new and fresh designs. I also learned that the name Tana (from the famous Liberty Tana Lawn) came from a lake in Africa. After the talk had ended we got to see a few of the original artworks and sketches that some of the fabric designs had been based on. We weren't allowed to put all of what we had seen on our blogs but I did take some photos for personal reference/inspiration.

Because we arrived a little early at Liberty, Carina and I had a look around in the store. The whole store is lovely but we obviously were mainly interested in the craft department. There were Liberty Fabrics of course, and a generous choice of Kaffe Fassett too. I spotted lots of What Delilah Did cross stitch kits as well (yay Sophie!). Well worth a visit if you are in London!

After a quick stop at the wonderful Wholefoods store for lunch (all yummy healthy and organic stuff, expensive too!) we headed back to the hotel to prepare for our afternoon Retreat Class. I wish I could say I made some PJ trousers in Kerry's three hour class but I didn't managed to finish them. Even with a great deal of help from both Kerry and Trudi. I now have two separate legs, which is a good start! :)

In the evening I started working on my Bird the Squirrel embroidery and continued to do so between classes the other day. People who saw him said they didn't realise these embroideries were so tiny, so I put a ruler next to him in the photo to show his true size, which is a little over an inch :)

Find part two of my Retreat recap here!

Fly me to the moon...

...and let me dance among the stars! Fly me to the moon is the name of the fabric I designed and got printed at Spoonflower and today I received the test swatch. I'm really happy with how it turned out!

Here is a closer look at the tap dancing, multi-colour scarf waving polar bear...

I think it would be a really sweet (yet cool) design to use in kid's quilts! I know it's not that big a deal for a lot of people to see their design on fabric but I'm really excited about it. It was something that was on my 'must do' list for a long time. The hardest part was choosing which colours to use but I think the this slightly retro/fifties palette works really well. I can't wait to add some more fabric designs in the same style and theme.

If you feel you need a tap dancing polar bear in your life you can purchase the fabric here. I have an embroidery pattern with the same theme coming out really soon which will be available via my own shops. I will post some photos of my embroidered version in the next couple days.

Hello...new fabric!

A couple of months ago I joined a European Quilt Bee and in January it's my turn to be Queen Bee, (or Princess Bee or whatever) which means all the other bees will be making quilt blocks for me!  I chose this block:

It's called an X and + block, not an entirely original choice as I found out later. Apparently it's been going round in bees and stitch a longs since it's made it's (re)appearance in a quilt by Setsuko Inagawa on the Tokyo Quilt Festival in 2011. You can find a great tutorial for a smaller sized 7.5" block here. The block I made is 11.75" and is based on measurements found here.

Most blocks will have the colour scheme you see in the example block I made: grey, black white and red with a splash of colour here and there (blue, orange, green etc). Ideally the fabrics would have quite bold, graphic and/or retro prints. I did have some fabrics in my stash (even some long time stash dwellers like the sewing themed one in the upper left diagonal) that fitted that description but I also purchased some extra to send out to my fellow bees.

These are all from a fabric shop on Etsy called Sew me a Song. I love the unique and fabulous selection of fabrics they sell: stylish and fun prints, great basics and lots of 'texty' prints as well. I especially like this 'Happy Thoughts' fabric by Julie Comstock:

And the fabric with the Writing paper print (Sugar Pixie for Timeless Treasures) is perfect for stitching lettering on!

Hope you all are having a wonderful crafty weekend! I'm kind of stuck to the couch right now due to a inflamed joint in my toe so I'm embroidering, reading Cloud atlas (I'm halfway, it surely is intriguing) and looking at pretty fabrics in online stores. :)

A bit of fabric fun...Spring Forest

Just this morning my friend Katy (from the Monkey Do blog) launched a fun contest where you have to put together a bundle of fabrics from this store to have a chance to win your very own bundle! Well it's easier to make fabric combo's from your stash than from an online store but I think I managed to make a rather attractive bundle of fabrics. I call it Spring Forest.
(From top left)
1. Cross Hatch in Green
2. 30's yellow
3. Bella Turquoise
4. Wing Study in Meadow
5. Herringbone in Berry
6. Forest in Off-White
7. Woodgrain in Vintage yellow
8. Sundae Strip in Lime
9. Pearl Bracelet in Turquoise
10. Basket Weave in Blue
11. Annies Big Dot in yellow
12. Mono Pez in Brown

Find details of the contest here.

From the Stash

No not from the Floss Stash this time...it's from the (also ever growing) fabric Stash. See that ueber gorgeous Heron Fabric (from Cloud 9 fabrics)? I received that from Brie in the Secret Santa Swap. I love Herons! Anyway I pulled some fabrics from my stash that, in my opinion, coordinate wonderfully with the Heron Fabric. There are some Denyse Schmidt fabrics there (have you seen the re-print of  Flea Market Fancy fabrics yet? Eeep!), some lovely dandelion fabric (for an instant summery feel, forgot the designer could be Patty Young) and a lovely turquoise gingham I received from Sarah Jane ( I think it's from her Children at Play line of fabrics, it reminds me of a summer pick nick).  I think I'm going to make a (quilted) pillow (or cushion depending on where you live) for the couch with these. :)

P.s. I am still working on the Bullion Knot tutorial. Hope to post it tomorrow!

Sunday Stash #39 Boy fabrics

This is fabric I bought to make a baby quilt for a friend of mine. She really likes orange and modern and hip prints and colours so I assume she will like these! Since I (sort of) still try to not buy too many fabrics I only bought some fat quarters of cute Laurie Wisbrun Urban Circus fabrics and a yard of Lizzy House's Castle Peeps fabric for the border.  Maybe I will add one or two coordinating solids and hopefully there are some fabrics hiding in my stash that will coordinate with these fun fabrics!

Meet Saffron & a chance to win a FQ bundle of Beetle Bug fabrics!

You can see that the White Bunny feels right at home among those awesome soft furnishings made with Saffron Craig Fabrics! If you have been following this blog since 'the early days' you will probably know that I became friends with Australian fabric designer Saffron Craig back in 2009. After a few mails we even got to meet at my house when Saffron and her family visited Europe! I want you all to get to know Saffron a little bit better too and I hope you will enjoy the mini-interview I did with her. Be sure to read the details about the Beetle Bug fabric giveaway at the end of this post! (ed.  giveaway has ended, comments are now closed)

To me, Beetle Bugs is one of the most stylish and original lines of fabric for kids that I have seen in recent years. Could you tell a little bit about what inspired you while you were designing this line?

SC Wow, thanks Nicole, stylish is what I was hoping for! The Beetle Bugs came about when my customers kept asking me to design a boys range."Saffron there is really not many boys fabrics out there!" kind of thing. 

So I kept an eye out for inspiration, which came while playing with my daughters and her friend Matisse. Together they would look for snails and lady beetles for hours in the garden and we had every milk and yogurt container, tin can, match box, you name it filled with them  (recycle recycle I say when you have kids). 

We would then often sit down and draw them together until I got a sense for the style I was going to go with. Once I'd drawn the main elements such as the snails and the bugs I had fun playing around with them putting them into patterns and repeats. The colours took quite some time to decide, I wanted them to be easy to live with and harmonious so I went with a more muted, neutral colour palette with highlights of colours to add some funk. 

A lot of the contemporary Australian fabrics I see (on Etsy for example), seem to have in common that the design is quirky, clean and almost graphic in design. Would you say your style is influenced by the place/country you live?

SC I think this particular style is influenced by the colour limitations of screen printing in small quantities, something a few of my fellow Australian designers seem to do. That's how I started myself before I was able to expand to commercial printing with 5 and 6 colours.

Living in Australia definitely influences my designing, I've always had a strong love and connection to the Australian landscape, heritage and culture, I studied Australian Aboriginal fibre arts at Uni. The colours here are so bright and intense and the landscape can be dramatic and there's abundant wild life, even in my backyard, so I draw inspiration from that.

Which (line of) fabric by another designer did you wish you had designed? 

SC As a designer I am hoping to one day create a design which is as instantly recognisable as Orla Keily's work, her stem print is inspirational. I also think that Unikko for Marimekko is a design I would love to have created. It is timeless and works on any surface in any colour and in any scale. Also Florence Broadhurst, an Australian Designer from the 70's, had a team of designers who created really amazing wall papers and fabrics, she is a cultural icon here and her work so wonderful, you can still buy her papers from here. 

What do you have in store for us this year? 

SC I have a few more fabrics ranges coming out early this year. The first one is Magical Lands, a range which depicts my mental snap shots from around Australia and is due to arrive soon. Following that I have a range of fabrics called Imaginary Flower in plums and vanilla, which is sure to be a favourite of mine. Then we'll have some new softies and recolour the Beetle Bugs with orange (having a Dutch husband we love orange). Later on we will also be printing second colourways of Magical Lands and Imaginary flowers and maybe some new designs later in the year.  So by June we should have about 40 new fabrics in total, better make some room in my studio!

I have also set myself the task of introducing a new product each month. Some ideas I am playing with is a collaboration for an embroidery pattern with yourself (ed. yes, working on that!), dress patterns, cushions, more downloadable paper designs, birthday card invites, the list goes on!

A busy year for little me.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Thank you so much Saffron for answering my questions and donating some of those gorgeous Beetle Bug fabrics for this giveaway. If you want a chance to win a Beetle Bug FQ bundle leave a comment on this post and be sure to tell me what your favourite (or perhaps most feared) bug is (of the garden variety I mean)! On the 10th of February 14.00 Central European Time I will close comments and draw a winner shortly after. Be a snail and leave a trail (website/email), so I can find you back just in case you should win! You can check out all Saffron's available fabric ranges, quilt kits and patterns here.

Stash, scraps and wips

As Luna and I had this afternoon to ourselves (Zoe is at an Ice Skating Party in the pouring rain, poor thing) I thought I'd try and spend an hour or so working on one of the neglected unfinished quilts. I gave Luna a glue stick and some fabric scraps and she was happily creating this nautical themed artwork. Note the embroidery hoop with two hearts under water on the left. :)

Meanwhile I tried to do a bit of work on last years Fat Quarterly Sew Along Quilt. Still not sure what size I will make that quilt. Since I have joined the StashPact11 on Flickr (a group all about using your stash instead of adding to it) I'm determined to only use what I already have to finish this quilt. It's not that I will not be buying any fabric at all this year, I'm just trying to use more from my stash and only buy if I need it to finish a project or have a specific project in mind. And I may have to think of a project soon to justify buying this gorgeous Tammis Keefe fabric (by Michael Miller)!

SundayStash #36 B&W fabrics

These are most of my Black and White Prints from my stash. Every now and then, but not often, I add something to the collection. I'm actually not sure if an all black and white quilt would be very nice. But  I don't like the idea of adding another colour either. If anyone has some good ideas for these or examples of Black and White projects let me know! In the mean time I will just continue building my Black and White Stash. :)

Sorting Scraps & the Loop Stitch

Scraps of fabric to keep are by my definition:"certainly a lot smaller than a fat quarter and must be big enough to possibly cut a 2 inch square from". Anything larger than that goes with the folded fabrics in my fabric cabinet and the small bits and pieces go in a ziplock bag so my daughters can make interesting art work with them. :) I had several (smallish) baskets full of unsorted fabric scraps and I have now sorted them into 'Cool colours', 'Warm Colours' and 'I'm not sure where to put it and that includes brown and grey'. I found some really nice scraps I forgot I had like a 5 inch square Heather Ross Unicorn and some Amy Butler Belle prints too. Totally in line with my (s)crap story of today is this giveaway (and sew along) on the Pleasant Home blog and this sew along for a Technicolour  Yawn Quilt, formerly known as the Scrap Vomit quilt,  on Katy's Imagingermonkey blog. If you have any other good scrap projects let me know!

I had not forgotten about my Embroidery Stitch Challenges, really! It just has been kind of busy here on the blog with giveaways and such that I just didn't get round to posting about it. The good news is that I loved the stitch I took on last weekend. It's called the Loop Stitch and is also known as the Centipede stitch. I used a cheery Rainbow floss and as you can see messed up a bit on the first few stitches but really got the hang of it later on. Now the bad news is, is that I have given up on making my sampler look pretty or outstanding. It will just be a piece of linen with lots of different stitches on. Maybe it will eventually inspire me to make a sampler pattern who knows?

This is what I had to share this Friday. Tomorrow I will be back with the winners of the Castle Peep Patterns Giveaway (there is still time to enter!). I'm totally loving all your comments about your favourite books! If you can't wait for the results: the Castle Peeps Patterns are now also available in my shop!

Sunday Stash #35 Bliss

I only ordered a little bit of the Bliss fabrics recently. Just to see if I liked it enough to order more. I like them all but the 'little- squares-with-flowers' is an absolute winner as far as I am concerned. Could be great in combination with other fabrics as well I think!

Politics, Peeps and things

It has been quiet on the blog this week. Partly because I am still not all that well and this week my laptop decided it didn't feel too well either and refused to start up. I'm now using our 'old' computer which is incredibly slow. So all that is slowing me down a bit. The good thing about my broken laptop is that in the evening (when it's too dark to stitch) I read quite a bit. I am now reading Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book and it's actually a fun, very well written book to read (even if the title doesn't sound like much fun). I have also been watching some debates on television because today there are elections in the Netherlands. Unlike other countries we have many political parties over here: about 20 or something! A great deal of them are very small though and there is even a Pirate Party. Not sure if it's a good thing if for the next 4 years our country is being led by a guy with a parrot on his shoulder shouting 'har har' all the time. ;)

Still busy working on the Castle Peeps patterns! I love how new and bright colours have made their way into my floss box due to this project. I do tend to use the same colours over and over again and this will absolutely influence colour choices for future embroidery projects.