New shop samples!

The girls are busy making up new samples for the shop and I thought I'd write about this one on the blog quickly! This tote is so simple to make and we've got a free DIY tutorial for it here! The outer, lining and straps fabric all came from the same single 80cm cut of fabric and because the fabric used is so fantastically different across the whole width, it makes the perfect reversible bag! The fabric used is Echino Decoro 2013 Rhythm, which you can find here amongst some other great options!

Promenade Sunday at Petworth House

So how are you this fine sunny monday morning? I hope its as lovely where you are as here. Did you have a good weekend? Over at the eternal maker we had an official working sunday - but if only all work was as fun as this... We headed on over to Petworth House's Promenade Sunday, a day they had organised to celebrate all things vintage. You could buy vintage clothes, get your hair and make up done, listen to the band, eat a cream tea and drink Pimms. Yum. That's me and Rachael in our finery up there. We're modelling some vintage specs that had lenses that were just a little bit too thick, and made us feel like we had partaken of a little too much Pimms.

Here's our stall. Yeah, okay, we're not vintage. But I like to think of what we do as creating future vintage. The stuff that will last - not the disposable items you can buy in the shops today. This is the stuff that is created with love, given with love, kept with love, and handed down to future generations with love. Future vintage.

The man on the left hand side fiddling with buttons is someone you may have heard me talk about, or may have met in store. But as an official introduction, meet Paul. He works in the shop Monday - Wednesday, and packs orders and answers the phone and is generally a very helpful individual. And fun to have around, too!

On to other things. This is a present for a friend. Made with the new echino London fabric - oh my, how gorgeous is this? So gorgeous, in fact, that I couldn't bear to cut it up and made my first whole cloth quilt. Maybe a little less extravagant than some of the other whole cloth quilts that I have seen in my time.

Backed in a lovely lime essex linen, and bound in the echino natural purple. So simple, it took about 3 hours from start to finish.

I left the selvedge on, partly because I love a good echino selvedge, and partly because it says London on it, and I liked that it sort of named the quilt too, that way.

And I did my favourite sort of quilting too - hand sewn big stitches, bold colours. Simple.

Anyway, that's all on this lovely Monday. See you soon!

a x

Quilt Market part too-whit too-whoo

This is how fast we had to move to make sure we saw everything. ok, maybe it's just camera blur..

Anna: I don't know why I wrote this post's title like that. I reckon it may just be because one of the images that kept cropping up over the next few days at Quilt Market was Owls. Now, you probably all know we like owls - we have the ghost owl in our tree, we had a huge ricrac owl (before he got unwound) and we have at least 2 other owls that I can think of in the shop. So now they've all caught on, and owls are everywhere!

Anyway, back to the important business that was Quilt Market.

The days usually started off with a class. We fabric shops need to learn too, you know. My classes were more 'lecture' like (when will I ever be old enough to sit in a lecture and not want a snooze???), whereas Rachael and Mum seemed to be able to pick classes where they actually made things, so I will let them do the talking (well, Rachael probably, Mum probably not).

Rachael: Yes Anna is right I was lucky enough to accidently choose courses that were more practical than many. One of the highlights was attending a class in Sashiko quilting. We were supposed to be learning to quilt the "Zen" way. We had to relax, we had to learn Sashiko history, we had to be calm and concentrate on nothing but the cloth, the needle and the thread...... it took an hour before our tutor would even let us start stitching! Needless to say when I did finally get started I was so excitied my stitching was anything but Zen! I'd love to pretend the photo above is my finished work but I just about managed three lines of stitching. As always it was a really friendly class and I expect you can tell it was also Halloween - I've never seen so many grown women in orange - I love an excuse for fancy dress!
Interesting Sashiko fact number one: Fireman used to be hailed as rock stars in ancient Japan due to their protection of the paper lined houses - their coats were made of many layers of cloth and stored in barrels of water for protection from the heat. Sashiko stitching was used to hold all the layers of cloth together and even today firemen parade at ceremonies flashing their coats open and shut to show off the decorative (yet very practical) stitching.

Anna: One of my best bits of the whole show was finally seeing in the flesh the Melody Miller range for Kokka, Ruby Star Rising. It is as fantabulous as I had hoped. I had a total star struck moment during a class when two ladies wearing lots of this lovely range came and stood beside me. As I knew it wasn't available yet I knew one of them must be Melody Miller herself. How excited was I?

the lovely Melody Miller and me

Ruby Star Rising by Melody Miller for Kokka - check out the viewfinder print- how could you not want that?

And of course very very very exciting is the new Echino Autumn 2010 range - how could we not love this?

Bird's featured again in the designs - and much of the colour palette is the same as we have already seen from previous echino ranges - so it will mix and match well with what you and we already have!

I'm thinking about an echino giveaway - how about being one of the first people in the UK to own an echino 2010 fat eighth pack? To win one of these just write a comment about how much you love echino below and we'll randomly select a winner in 2 weeks time!

The very talented Cynthia Mann from Birch Fabrics

I was super excited to meet Cynthia Mann from Birch fabrics - I have been admiring her fabric for a while but never actually managed to sort out an order (would have wanted it all, I need to cut down somewhere!) - but seeing it all in the flesh and meeting Cynthia sold me on it - expect it in the new year - but I'll definitely let you know when it gets here!

Trish Preston from Two Peas in a Pod and Me

Anna: I first came across Trish Preston when I commissioned some of her work for Sew Hip - how funny that I kept coming back to this little pattern stand and thinking "there's something familiar about these" and only putting 2 and 2 together when we got talking! It's great to put a face to a name I emailed so many times! Trish's patterns are in store now - we will be putting them online soon I promise!

And lastly one final note about Hoppy, the cutest bunny who lived on our hotel patio.

I ♥ Hoppy