Garden Swap - Sent

Nova has now received her garden swap package, so I can blog a few photos I took before I posted...

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Sketchbook -

Inspired by garden plans, I decided to make Nova a fabric covered sketchbook with felt applique trees and fench knot and bead flowers.

Felt and button tress with embroidered ladybird on the spine.
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More photos in my Flickr 'swap set' - link
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I really enjoyed doing this swap! - Thanks for being a great swap partner Nova & big thanks to Kerry for organising it x

New buttons, a penguin parade and some lovely fabric!

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New buttons at incy wincy stitches -

I’ve been looking into getting some unique handmade buttons to add to my website for some time now … and I didn’t have to look far! Check out these beautiful buttons from two Crafteroo members, Gill and Glue&Glitter…

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Laura from Glue&Glitter made me some ‘hello’ buttons a while back for a mini quilt I was making and I just had to buy some more for my site. Check out her cute Matryoshka doll set plus many more here.

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Plus Gill who I worked with on the Crafteroo Combined Challenge makes the most wonderful polymer clay buttons … there big, there bright and I just love them!

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Both Laura and Gill's buttons would make great card embellishments or could be used to customise clothing, accessoires etc...

New Buttons - www.incywincystitches.com/page27.htm

Sets shown here - 1&3. Matryoshka doll set and spotty tea cup set by Glue&Glitter, 2. Polymer clay heart button set by Gill

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Penguin parade
Emma’s playgroup is having a summer fayre next Saturday, which involves a little parade around the village followed by lots of stalls and activites at the primary school. Playgroup has decided to dress up as penguins this year and here’s the mask that Emma helped make on Friday.

I’ve also modified Em’s Halloween cat costume into a little penguin suit with fluffy wings! I’ll add pics of the full costume and parade at the weekend.

Patchwork fabric -
I brought this gorgeous patchwork fabric from John Lewis yesterday, which I’m going to turn into a summer quilt for Em’s bed. I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it. Each square is about 2”, just imagine how long that would take to stitch!

Now, I’ve only ever worked on tiny quilts before so this is going to be a bit of a challenge for me as I’m making it to fit her single bed. Plus the seam lines aren’t exactly straight, so I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do the quilting stitch? I think I’ll try to ‘stitch in the ditch’ as much as possible, but it’s not going to be very straight! … But maybe this will add a bit of character to it?

I actually have a few quilting questions, if anyone has any top tips … Do you pre-wash your fabric? I’ve read many tutorials and books where some do and some don’t!? - Do you pre-wash to avoid shrinkage? Or wash after to give it that puckered up/aged look?
Also, I usual lightly thread tack my mini quilts to hold the top fabric, wadding and back fabric together whilst I machine stitch, then remove the stitches after. But it will take a very long time to tack a quilt of this size! Would you thread tack a piece this big? or just use pins/quilters safety pins?

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Right must get back to my orders and catch the post… ttfn. x

Swap Mad!

Yes, I think I've got the swap bug this year! It seems as soon as one has been posted I find another one I fancy getting involved in. This time it's the Granny Square Swap over on Spans' Stitchin's blog - http://spans-stitchin.blogspot.com/

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Now, if you've always wanted to try crochet but have never actually given it a go this might be the swap for you, as Hannah has added some granny square tutorials and instructions on her blog to help first timers.

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Really looking forward to getting my hooks out and doing a bit of crocheting whilst sitting in the sunshine :)

Garden Swap Received

I received my 'Garden Swap' goodies from Nova a few days ago. Click images to see bigger pics.

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Lots of wrapped goodies...

Button flower bouquet...

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Lots of lovely goodies...

... including lots of chocs, some cute wooden animal buttons, a make your own frog kit, handmade soap, a bbq recipe book, beautiful button flowers and a fabulous felt pincushion flower :)

Button flowers
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Thanks Nova :)
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I posted Nova's parcel off today, so will add some pics once they have arrived.

garden swap and an award

I made a start on my garden swap project last week and thought I'd link to a few pieces I found on Flickr whilst looking for some inspiration. I've added a little sneak pic of what I started stitching over on Flickr too - link

1. Sumptuosity Love Bug, 2. Grow pincushion, 3. Untitled, 4. APPLE TREE IN THE FIELDS - SPRING hand embroidered original wall art, 5. ♥ love grows up!, 6. Lovisa's garden, 7. Spring bird, 8. kingfisher & bullrush

Award!

Thanks to vintage violet for my 'Friends' blog award <3>

Now, I know we've never actually met but when you spend as long as we do chatting on various sites such as Crafteroo, twitter, facebook, flickr etc... well you kind of feel like good friends - Being a work at home mum can be a little restrictive on your social life at times, so it's good to have these special friends on the net. Thanks Megan.x

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Felt heart brooch by maximum RABBIT designs

Now I have to pass my award to eight of my bloggy friends - some who I've met in real life and some that I hope to meet someday...

cloudhopping

lucykate crafts

ethel&edna

gone to earth (aka primrose corner)

pennydog

meridian ariel

blottedcopybook

Kitschy Coo

oh, and I'm sending the award straight back to Megan too :p
x
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And finally, I just had to show off this little set that blottedcopybook made for some friends of ours who have just had a baby boy. How cute!! Von used an elephant pattern around the handle hat - she's so clever! Click here to see larger - link

And the winner is ...

... Number 7 - Amy Lane!!

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Well done to Amy! - You've won all those fabric button goodies! Send over your address details and I will get them in the post.

info (at) incywincystitches.com

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Thanks to all that took part and for all your lovely comments. x

Blog Giveaway

200th Blog Post Giveaway!!

To celebrate my 200th blog post I'm having a little giveaway. Simply leave a comment below and you could win a whole bunch of goodies - including one of my large fabric button brooches, a set of fabric buttons, a pair of button hair slides and some other crafty treats!!

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Just enter a comment (and your email address) between now and 12pm on Saturday 2nd May and then stop back on Saturday afternoon, when the winner will be announced. Good luck!

Garden Swap

I've signed up for another swap, this time being organised by pennydog and my partner is Nova over in Australia.

Now, poor Nova is currently without a garden as she is living away from home. I hope she doesn't mind me quoting her...

We're currently residing in a caravan in a dusty, red, deserty corner
of Australia without much plant life to speak of, so no gardening for
me for a few months and I’m missing my garden terribly.

So let's hope I make something that will cheer Nova up a bit and add a little colour to her caravan ... and I definitely won't be using any dusty red colours!

I'm not sure how we'd cope without a garden; we seem to be spending all our time out there at the moment with all this warm spring weather. Em has been planting and watering lots of seedlings and making perfume with all the fallen petals this week (Well, petal perfume mixed with lots of mud and grass!). Anyway, to finish off this garden post I'll add a few pics that Em took out in the garden last weekend...

More garden pics over on Flickr - link

Letter Buttons

Cross stitch letter buttons - featured on Feeling Stitchy !!

Happy Easter Finds

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1. woolly easter eggs 2, 2. Easter Egg pin, 3. Happy Easter, 4. Happy unazukin easter!, 5. Another Easter Egg, 6. A Found Bird's Nest

Mini Quilt

Mini make! Quilted nursery wall hanging for baby Dylan.

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Laura of Glue and Glitter made me some super cute speech bubble 'hello' buttons, which I just love! I've also brought some other fabulous button sets from her which will be on my website next week.

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Secret Easter Chick - I received my Easter Chick goodies this morning. Thank you so much to Corky for my beautiful fabric baskets and chocolate treats! We will be using the baskets tomorrow for our Easter egg hunt which we have been preparing for today (see below).

Eggs all painted and sparkly ready for our egg hunt tomorrow

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Wishing you all a Happy Easter. x

Time for a rest!

I feel exhausted! In fact I don't think I've sat down for more than 10 minutes in the past few weeks! What with orders, swaps and getting stock ready for a local shop, I'm pretty much dead on my feet. So it's time for me to have a little break and spend some time with hub and Em, who are both off school/playgroup for the Easter holidays.
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Here's just a few pics of some of the stuff I've been making ...

Cross stitch button order now on its way to America
Large fabric button brooches
Fabric button bracelet
Fabric button hair slides

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This is just some of the stock now available at Lilliecup Green over in Breedon-on-the-Hill.

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As always - more pics over on Flickr ... www.flickr.com/photos/incywincystitches
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And finally we've done a 'Secret Easter Chick' over on Crafteroo and here's the selection of goodies I sent over to Gill ...I've borrowed Gill's photo as I forgot to take pics before I sent it! :p

Felt Easter egg & fluffy chick with crafty and chocolate tweets!

Hope you all have a happy Eatser :) I'm off to put my feet up and have a cuppa. x