Celebrate Colour Voting

Wheeee - My very yellow pillow made the final selection of Stitched in Color's September round of the Celebrate Colour competition.

If you have a moment, why not click through and spend 5 minutes voting for your favourites in the four categories. Voting closes tomorrow (Thursday) at midnight (American EST).

More votes means more support for Rachel, who's done such a fab job pulling this competition together.  Thanks Rachel!

Old Yeller

Yep, I dang done finished that darn cushion. Seemed to take forever.

I'd been thinking about making this for a while, ever since I saw this picture in Maison Créative. The wall art is made from yellow cardboard; I liked the hexagons and also wanted to mimic how the shadows changed the yellow by using different fabrics.

It finally took the deadline for Rachel's Celebrate Color Colour (see, doesn't that look better) competition to get me off my backside and do it.

There is piping and the quilting is fairly heavy - hexagon spirals made with my walking foot (still not brave enough to try free motion).

The back has an envelope style closure with an extra row of triangles. Nice and simple.

Would've been simpler if I hadn't done this:

Bottom panel sewn on back to front.

I don't know how I end up making silly mistakes like this. Thoughts must've wandered.

(Source: People magazine)

Umm. What?

Oh, right. So, I really like this cushion because it gives a nice bright pop of yellow to my couch and goes so well with my other handmade covers.

Why you little...

Nothing a nice glass of rosé can't fix.

I'm just finishing off this little project...

...and then I get to pull my Go! Baby out of its box. Yay! Hope you're all having a great week!

Bits and Bobs

Howdy everyone! Just popping in to pass on a few links; some important, some more for fun.

If you've been following the news you'll know Texas is in a spot of trouble at the moment. They always say Texans do it bigger, and unfortunately these brushfires are no exception.

A site with some great t-shirts to support the relief effort can be found here (Thanks Aidan for the link).

And if you are in the US and one of my quilty-type readers, quilt donations for those who have lost everything are being organised through the Modern Day Quilts blog.

I forgot to mention last month that my bunting lantern tutorial made it into Plumetis online magazine. I was so happy to discover this beautiful little French e-zine - you can find it and their blog over here.

And finally, I wanted to link up to Susan's fabric party over at PatchworknPlay (sorry I'm a bit late Suz).

I don't really have a favourite fabric, I love 'em all (this is my problem).  But I'll show you (again) one of my favourite French fabrics that I've bought since arriving here:

Found at the Aix-en-Provence weekend market, this light canvas is 100% cotton and was a steal at 10€/m. It's very girly which is unusual for my tastes and probably explains why I can't think of what to do with it. Other than look at it and stroke it occasionally.

More French fabric that needs to be sewn (I know what I'm doing with these though):

For those with a fabric fetish, pop over to Susan's for a look around!

Next post: that darn yellow cushion.

Afternoon in Aix

Saturday we called in the babysitter so that the mister, the baby and I could have lunch together in Aix-en-Provence.

It always makes me smile to think back to the days when we only had one child and how hard we thought it was to go anywhere and do anything. Ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

Now we have four kids and going out with just one, a newborn (who'd rather sleep than run in front of cars) at that, is sooo easy. Pram? check. Change bag? check. Boobs? check. Let's go!

I took my boys to the café/restaurant where Susan, her hubby and I had great coffee the week before the baby was born. The meals were delicious, although more expensive than I'd expected.

I had the slow-cooked shoulder of lamb with cous-cous:

The mister had duck with a goat's cheese and fig filo and asian salad.

The baby, predictably, had milk. Again.

Meal envy: I had it. Mine was great but his was amazing.

But I won the dessert round with my tarte au citron:

After the meal we went for little wander, as we are wont to do.

Just around the corner was the Hôtel de Cormis:

The door is from the late 17th century:

In fact doorways seemed to jump out at me everywhere.

Not to mention all these interesting keyholes, door knockers and knobs.

Hôtel de Theron, 1735.

Ah yes. Knockers and knobs.

A bit of window shopping:

Yikes.

Evil biscuit shop with gravitational pull.

Scary mannequin.

The mister was holding the baby against his chest as we headed back to the car. I walked about 5m behind him and could see the facial expressions of those walking past him.

A man with a baby trumps a man with a puppy any day. The mister could've come home with a dozen hot French women and at least one gay couple.

Just as well the mister wasn't paying any attention; it would've been hard explaining that to the babysitter.

La Rentrée, Again

It's back to school again, this summer has gone far too quickly for my liking. At least we're still enjoying gorgeous weather.

We had our neighbours around to meet the new baby. I thought about baking something for about, oh, 3.7 seconds, before I headed down to our local patisserie:

There's no way I can compete with this:

The baby also got another lovely package in the mail this week:

Pages from an old children's book = clever wrapping

Some darling handmade items all the way from home.

Thank you so much Michelle.

Honestly, could they be any cuter? Look at those teeny weeny carrots.



And they're reversible.



I was lucky enough to win the Accuquilt giveaway on Lisa and Sarah's blog A Spoonful of Sugar a few weeks ago - my loot arrived this week as well:



I'm being strong and not opening the box until I finish off my current little project:



A new cushion cover. A very yellow cushion cover.



And because we haven't had any French music for a while, here's a song by Mika I'm hearing everywhere this end-of-summer. I challenge you not to dance around your living room as you listen.

The lady in red is a well known French actress, Fanny Ardent. She's gorgeous and has that French je ne sais quoi by the bucketload.



I also love the grey haired, bearded character you first see shaving. He has some banging dance moves; the hips don't lie.

Hope you're all having a great week!

P.S. For those who like to watch men speaking French, here's a link to a Mika introducing the song. He's as cute as a button.

Little Projects

We're enjoying gorgeous warm weather here in Provence this final week of holidays before the kids head back to school.

Plenty to see around the garden. 

No idea what this is, but I love the colour. 

Sadly, these will go to waste. I'm having enough trouble preserving my sanity, let alone my olives. 

I've been working on some little projects, perfect for those small pockets of spare time I find every now and then. 

These newborn pants are about 30 minutes to sew. My 30 minutes had to be spaced throughout a whole day, but I got them done in the end. You can find the tutorial here at Made by Rae.  

Then I decided to make my darling daughter some skirts. This first one I actually made before the baby came, but it's a fab little tutorial which you can find here at Two Little Banshees.

I asked my daughter to wear this for me today and she tried to bribe me into letting her watch more television in exchange for modelling services. She gets a high-five for creativity but like the US, I don't negotiate with terrorists, so I took this photo when she wasn't paying attention.

Sewn with an on-sale pillowcase, should've run the stripes vertically and made the skirt shorter. Not my best effort. 

Next skirt - I tried this great little tutorial over at Dana's blog, Made. Thoroughly recommended.

The bias binding adds such a nice touch. 

The elephant came first - I made him about two years ago. I bought the pattern for it at Two Little Banshees; you can find it here.



Some behind-the-scenes photos that show my brilliant mothering skills.


The skirt had to be pinned on the shutters three times as my little assistant kept taking it down for me.

So I convinced my assistant to pick some lavender instead. Turns out the lavender can pull back. 

Bad mother. I took the photo first, rescued the child second. But I promise he wasn't crying, just surprised. 

Ahem. So back to the sewing. I made another one of Dana's skirts, this time with the double layers.

My model was more agreeable this time round. 

I also managed to finish the baby's quilt. The top and back were pieced before he was born, quilting was very simple - a single line on all the white sashing. Scrappy binding of the darker (blue and green) fabrics only.


The back was pieced so that the white sashing corresponded with sashing on the front.



I had every intention of taking some nice arty-farty photos after this, but the baby started yelling and my little helper reappeared.



Soon after taking this one I detected they'd both crapped themselves. Sigh, photo shoot over.

"You think this is bad, wait 'til you start eating solids." 

One day at a time, Kirsty. One day at a time.