Spoonflower "Green Garden" fabric

My Spoonflower Green Garden fabric washed and trimmed

I did finally manage to find my Spoonflower Green Garden fabric! I ordered a fat quarter and I thought I would show you what I've done with it. I've been wanting to make some pencil cases for ages so that's what I made.

I ordered the quilt weight cotton, so I added a thin layer of muslin to back it, and then used a thicker solid green cotton for the back of the pencil case. Gingham seemed like the obvious choice for the interior.

I'll be bringing pencil cases to my next craft show, A Handmade Holiday this Saturday in Kensington market. This show also happens to be the launch of the Kid Icarus screen printed 2012 calendar. I illustrated April and I can't wait to see the finished calendar. The calendar is a limited edition of 125 priced at $80.

Here are all the details:
A Handmade Holiday
Time: Saturday December 3rd 2011 (one day only)
Time: 11:00am – 6:00pm
Location: St. Stephen-in-the-Fields, 103 Bellevue Ave (College and Bellevue)


My Green Garden fabric is also available at Spoonflower.com, and this week fat quarters are 2-for-1! A really good deal I've taken advantage of myself to order extras of my kite fabrics. My shop now also has my Storybook Cottage calendar which is formatted for cotton-linen fabric - perfect for tea towels.

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Green Garden Spoonflower fabric

I think I've mentioned it before, but for those who don't know yet, there's a place online where you can print your own custom fabric called Spoonflower. Since I've been doing more digital illustration lately, it seemed like a good time to revisit the site.

I subscribe to their email updates, and every week there's a contest for fabric design. This week the topic is root vegetables, so I came up with the design above. Figuring out how to do repeats such as the half-drop used for this one was the tricky part (thank you Bradley!). But now that I have a rough idea how to do it I hope to keep improving my designs.

You can find me on Spoonflower here. Once you receive a test swatch of your fabric you can make your designs available for sale on Spoonflower.  I've ordered a sample of my Green Garden design, so I'll post that when it arrives. But in the meantime, it's just really fun!

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Single girl assembled

a glimpse of our new backyard

The "single girl" quilt is now assembled. It turns out I had only bought enough batting and backing fabric for the twin size so I couldn't make it larger after all.I finished the piecing last week, then sewed together the back panel which is orange floral My Folklore fabric. Before assembling you can use the template provided in the pattern to mark the hand quilting lines. I liked the way the circles look so I did use the pattern.

Here's a picture that shows the hand quilting:

I marked the lines on with a 2B pencil

I've done the bottom row of the quilt so far. It's a twin so it shouldn't take too long, except insofar as it always takes too long to finish hand quilting a quilt. I'm already thinking about my next quilt so I have to try to stay motivated to finish this one.

I basted with safety pins this time, much quicker!

A detail of the hand quilting stitches

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Springtime

These Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) are our first flowers!

First of all, judging from all the shoots coming up in our gardens it's springtime and the bulbs are growing! Also we're pleased to see that the little lilac tree we planted in the fall is getting some buds. Relieved to see it survived after being buried in about 17 feet of snow this winter...

Also, for the first time, I have finally brought branches inside to force the blooms. I've seen it in magazines and they are always stunning but I haven't managed it until now. I think it has something to do with having a house and our own garden. But the branches on the left are from our parent's house (my in-laws), they're cherry tree branches. The branches on the right are from our own Forsythia.

So this is a reminder, now is the time to bring some branches in! Of course I will post pictures once ours bloom. I have several vases all over the house. And two tips:

1. woody branches should be cut at the bottom in an "x" so that they can draw up water more easily

2. the branches will turn the water a golden brown colour so you might want to use a coloured vase. I don't really mind about it, plus I have lots of branches and had to use all the vases we had.

Hope you have a happy Spring.

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Gardening

This weekend we had some rainy days but still had a little patch of time out in our yard. It was lovely doing a little bit of tidying up in the garden, trimming back some plants, mowing our little patch of grass and raking up the leaves. The big trees at the very back of our yard, behind the shed, lost their leaves very quickly. The picture above is a little lilac tree that I planted a few weeks ago. I thought it had died - it was much taller than this - and I cut it back and left it. But then I noticed these little leaves growing. That made me happy.

After living in apartments and then a condo for so many years it is so nice to have a yard again. We also started a little compost pile in the corner which is great because we just throw everything from the yard in there. And now and then some bits of food from the kitchen - eggshells, banana skins, vegetable bits. It really decomposes down very quickly and I just turn it over now and then with a bow rake. (I just figured out what it's called from google - basically just a short sturdy rake). Later on I may add a little bit of fencing around it or something but right now it seems be working - not very elegant but simple and effective. And maybe it's all the fresh air but there doesn't seem to be any bad smell at all. In fact when I turned it over it had a nice earthy smell - like forest undergrowth after a rain.In the back we have a great shed - it's really big and already has an "L" shaped work table in it. Someday we'd like to finish the walls and fix it up a bit. I imagine a summer studio but it's been pretty practical having a place to put the garden tools, our bicycles and pots and things.The best part is my potted plants now have a chance at a decent life with some real sunshine. This begonia has been flowering since we moved in at the end of July (thank you Jaimie!). I found the green ceramic planter at the Sunday market at St. Lawrence for $5. It's so nice, the base is shaped like big petals. I love ceramic planters.

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