blue is the colour…

Hello, I hope you’re enjoying your weekend so far?  It’s been wet and grey here, but as I write this the rain has stopped and the sky is blue…

which brings us to where it all began.  This is a photo of my Nanny (my Mum’s Mum) holding me as a baby.

I must have been very small…a month or two old at most.  And what is that hanging on the wall?  Oh yes…it’s a piece of Heals fabric.

Pastoral by Regina Moritz-Evers for Heals

When I was young we moved house a lot.  I lost count of the number of houses I lived in.  But in every house, my Mum hung this fabric up somewhere.  It meant we were home.

And a few years ago, my Mum moved house again.  And instead of hanging this piece of fabric in her new home, she gave it to me.  It was more than just a piece of fabric to me.   It was the start of a collection.

I already had an long standing interest in textiles and fabric design.  I also had a fondness for online shopping.  I can’t remember the moment that those two things combined and I found myself looking at vintage fabric online…but I have spent many a happy hour since searching for that perfect piece of fabric.

I think maybe I’ve always had it.

But I’m still allowed to want more, right?

Rachel x

oops – not quite a rainbow…

Hello and Happy Friday!!

I’ve still got 3 fabrics to show you in our Heals rainbow, but I’m going a tad off the rails today…the only dark blue/indigo Heals fabric I’ve got is Verdure, and we’ve already looked at that pattern when we did orange.  So I’m going renegade and showing you a dark(er) green – with blue bits – instead…then we’ll get back on track with blue tomorrow.  Hope that’s ok – I do love rainbows but I’m also a bit of a rebel!

So here we have green fabric number two…and I think it’s a beauty!

Conifer by Gay Dulley for Heals

It’s called Conifer but it makes me think of multicoloured raindrops – quite fitting after our thunderclouds and lighting yesterday.  I have seen it in a pink & purple colourway but I’m not that into pink…greens and blues on the other hand…I can’t resist them.

I made a lampshade for a friend out of this fabric, and the way the light shines through the mustardy orange outlines is beautiful.

The pattern is on a smaller scale than a lot of my other favourite prints, but it’s good to mix these things up a bit.  It also made an appearance in my rainbow patchwork quilt  – if you haven’t already seen it then do pop over to my blog and have a look.  The photos are of the quilt when it was a work in progress – I have finished it now but have been too busy snuggling under it to take any more photos!

I hope you’ve had a good week and you’ve got a nice weekend planned; we are going to be taking it easy after a busy few weeks.  Please join me here for my last couple of guest posts before the lovely Jen of Little Birdie takes over the guest blogging on Monday.

Rachel x

fresh fabric fervour

Although I use mainly vintage fabrics for my makes, I am a true fabric addict and just as likely to sigh longingly over contemporary ranges from time to time.

My new Living Etc for June arrived yesterday and I sat down this morning for a good old browse.

My eyes immediately lighted upon a fold-out promotion.

Normally the recycle bag would be beckoning. I hate those wodges of stapled-in advertising bumf that cause instability in my magazine pile.

But not this time.

The fold-out pages tell of fabric and wallpaper producer Scion’s new products. And my! Those fabrics are really jolly nice!

The company has drawn inspiration from mid-century archive documents and modern Scandinavian design to produce a collection called Melinki that’s right up my street.

I have already sent for samples. I just couldn’t help myself.

wonky weekend

I should really have been spending time making cushion covers and other bits for a stall in a few weeks.

But its a holiday weekend, right? So instead, I did what I felt like doing.

Making wonky stars.

Last time I made some of these I had a twinkly quilt in mind, but instead ended up using the stars to make cushions.

This time I won’t be put off.

I love finding different colour combinations that work, both as a single star and as a part of the whole.

I got to the end of a batch last night and after laying them out, thought they just looked too samey.

So I stuck a yellow one in, just to see.

Better!

appliquéd floral fancy

I like doing appliqué on the sewing machine. It allows me to use scraps of fabric that are too small to include the luxury of a seam allowance.

Today’s project started as just a way to combine lots of little bits of vintage sheets and other vintage fabrics. Too small for proper patchwork, I decided to sew them onto a backing fabric and add a design on top.

This is the result. Its the second in what I imagine will be an ongoing series of lolly flowers. I like the way that the black of the Kaffe Fassett fabric and wool felt used for the flower and leaves pop against the faded pastel softness of the sheets.

All that remains is to turn it into something… cushion cover? framed panel? We shall see.