I'd like you to meet a friend of mine...

So there's a new rule in our house: no TV from 9am - 5pm! I came up with this brilliant solution for both myself, and my 17 month old daughter. It's actually working out fantastically as we have a new routine: take it easy having breakfast and catch up on news until 9am, then shower, morning tea, and then get out and do something for the day. Today it was going on a new walk to explore our local area, and going to bunnings to buy a hedge trimmer! Then comes lunch, and when I am lucky a 3 hour nap (AKA sew time)! After that it's pure playtime until 5pm, when on comes ABC2 and mummy can get everyones dinner, and we settle in as a family for the evening. Anyway, I digress...

This morning at 8am I had a real urge to finish off a bucket hat that I've been working on, so I put on a show for Emily (seeing as it's in the allowable hours) and headed downstairs. When I got there, I took a moment to appreciate my space!

No longer am I crammed in a corner of the dining room, but I really have my own space. I have my OWN table to spread out whatever projects I wish, but I also have a (here comes my friend...) a SewEzi table! This thing is truelly amazing. In the interest of full discloure, my in-laws (Just Patchwork) are the Australian distributors for this item, however I really do think it's a great poduct. It's a small table just for your machine. You get a template that matches your machine so it slots in perfectly, and then you have a greater flat surface to sew on. Plus it's seperate from your other piles on your regular table, so you don't have to be moving your machine constantly (or was that just me... dinner time, when visitors were over..)

The other thing I love is when I go to visit my parents, if it's going to be for a while, I can take my machine & table with me. It's so portable. I know this is turning into a blatent product plug, but this table has made my sewing life SO much easier. If you sew all the time, maybe it's worth looking at?? Anyway here's the link for those that are interested.

In other breaking news... Mothers all around the world have been advised to not leave 17 month old little girls unsupervised with crayons  :)

It's hard to tell from the pic where this lovely artwork took place, but it's one of the legs from my beautiful table in the top picture!

A special quilt for an amazing girl...

I thought I would share with you all my favorite gift that I have made for someone... although this post is about 6 months late! It's a quilt that I made for my daughter for her first birthday: it's made from her clothes (and one bedsheet) from her first year of life. I got the inspiration from this post one of my favorite blogs; Wee Wonderfuls.

I hadn't made a quilt for Emily yet, and wanted it to be something special. It was a diffficult decision to cut up my little girl's favorite, and most special outfits from events like coming home outfits, weddings etc. I am not sure that all around me agreed with my choice seeing as we will be having more children, however my theory is that now those clothes and memories will be caputred forever.

The design process took me a while, because that just comes hard for me. I wanted something simple though because I was going to be working with all different kinds of fabrics (and some were super stretchy), so squares worked a treat! I also wanted to keep the background fabric as simple as possible so that the clothes could be the star of the show  :) I missed this in the pics, but I backed the quilt with hot pink oh so soft dot fabric. I also added a large heart in the center out of one of her bedsheets, and some ducks from her first pair of jeans, and another special pair of pants.

A lady on my facebook fanpage said that the gifts that she likes making the most are those that are used, loved and enjoyed. I have to say that I totally agree. For now, Emily's quilt is mainly used for snuggling under with her mumma when she happens to wake in the middle of the night  xo