Amelia's Quilt Pillowcase

I almost forgot. I did make a pillowcase to match Amelia's quilt and I've since learnt that she loves it so much that it's turned into a traveller, ie if she hops into mummy's bed, pillow comes too. So cute.

I used raw edge applique for the heart and butterfly and hand stitched the antenae.

And finally...Amelia's Quilt

Next Steph and I pieced the backing using fabrics from the flowers, hearts and butterflies and arranged in an off-centre cross.

I then sandwiched the quilt using cotton batting, basted it with thread and quilted it with an all over loop and heart design.

So as to not detract from the quilt I used the same pale pink background fabric for the binding which I machine sewed on and then Steph and I hand sewed to finish it. And I think I've dragged this out long enough...here it is.

Our market debut that didn't

We said from the start that we'd be honest so how did our first market go? Well, it didn't. We felt in the end that we wouldn't have enough stock to display and Amelia's quilt took up a lot of time which could have been spent sewing other items. In the end we would have been sorely disappointed anyway had we busted our butts to get there as the organiser hadn't done much advertising so hardly anyone knew the market was on and many stall holders packed up halfway through the market which was a real shame.

So in this one case it may have been to our favour to miss this opportunity as it made us reassess where we want this business to go and what we want out of it. We always said that if it felt like a chore then it wasn't worth doing and this market definitely fell into that category.

As it stands right now, Steph has done a brilliant job sewing all the play placemat sets which are ready for sale and are waiting for me to put them in our etsy store. I'm hesitating (read: procrastinating) over postage costs as I want to charge only what it would cost to send yet Australia Post's online calculator is a pain to use. Keeps quoting me ridiculous amounts so it looks like I'll have to get down to the post office for a quote. And I've completed only 2 aprons - the rest are waiting for assembly. When I get my sewing mojo back the rest will sew up quickly.

In the meantime life goes on and we do what we can when we can.

I knew I forgot something

I found my way back finally. Sorry, how rude of me to not finish the reveal. I can fix that...

Trapunto.

I basted small off-cut pieces of batting behind each flower - I found it easier to baste with thread rather than pins so it was guaranteed to lay flat and smooth

and then free motion stitched a line close to the edges of the petals (aka raw edge applique) and also in the centre of the flowers. I stitched a spiral here but other flowers had hearts or pebbles stitched in the centre.

I then flipped the quilt top over and carefully cut away the excess batting as close to the line of stitching as I dared without cutting into the fabric.

I did the same for each heart and butterfly except for the three large hearts which were attached by needle-turn appliqued and have 2 layers of batting behind them for the trapunto. These were stitched close to the edge on the background fabric rather than on the applique fabric and I was really happy how they appeared to pop out of the quilt. I also used needle-turn applique to attach the caterpillar segments and added 2 layers of batting for the trapunto there too.

Then to finish off the butterflies I hand stitched the antenna with chain stitch, backstitch or stem stitch. The one above was done with chain stitch.