Baby gifts... bunnies and bibs

Well the quilting has been put on the back burner for the moment.  Quilts are such big projects I have lost interest, so I decided to do some fun sewing.  What is more fun than sewing for babies?  I came across a cute bunny pattern at The Quilters Angel when I was there buying some bias binding to make bibs and thought I would make some bunnies as well as bibs.  The pattern is called Bunny Bundle and is by Calico Farm Designs.

I managed to use stash fabric for the bunnies and some trim I had, but did buy some ric rac. The only other purchase was some yarn to crochet the flowers but I preferred my bunnies with no flowers.  So much for using up stash... now I have more yarn in the stash ... sigh...

The pattern is good.  Not much else to say except I got totally carried away and made 6 bunnies!  At least they have looked nice decorating my house for Easter!

The only difference I made to the pattern (apart from leaving off the crochet flowers) was to not use buttons for the eyes or tail.  These are going to be gifts for babies so I need them to be safe for them, even though they are really more decorative than a toy.  I used black felt for the eyes and made yoyos for the tails.  I am pretty pleased with them and have a few favorites in the bunch, that may not get gifted...ahem...

I also made some bibs.  I had enough fabric leftover from last time I made bibs to make another pair.  The only change is I used a different backing fabric.  I bought tea towels which are meant to be highly absorbent.  So they look pretty much, exactly like my last set. The pattern is a TNT for me now as that makes 5 bibs I have made from it now and I am sure there will be more.

so enough baby gifts stocked away for now.  Ciao for now kittens... Happy Easter!

All quiet on the sewing front...

I haven't posted for awhile and haven't got a lot of sewing to show, but thought I should catch you up on a few things happening at the moment.

I came 6th in the Pattern Review Activewear Contest!  Pretty happy with that.  No surprises in the winners - they were all ones I would have picked as winners. Results are here if you would like to check it out.

I recently attended a Craft Fair held here locally - Craft Alive.  It seems to be a new group bringing craft fairs to regional areas.  Yay!  It was pretty good, except for the queue for a coffee!  

Some great locally produced yarns and shops were there and I heard a great talk from Pauline of Pauline's Quilters World about quilt as you go and it had me really fired up as I have had some fabrics waiting to be made into a quilt for our bedroom for ages  I was baulking at how I was going to quilt such a large quilt and this seemed to be the answer to that quandary.  I did have to buy one more pack of batiks to boost my fabric for the quilt too.

So I started on the quilt using the handbook and basing the design on a quilt that is featured as an instructional piece in the handbook.  The design it is based on is called Rectangles Rock N Roll.  I am using some batiks I bought in NZ and adding some others.  This is a picture of my trial blocks.

And in non-sewing news.  Our house has been too quiet since Cosmo left us and so we have finally found ourselves a new dog.  

Champ is a rescue dog about 1 year 4 months old.  He is a Australian Stumpy tail cattledog x German Shephard (they think).  He was saved from a pound as a 4month old and then got parvovirus.  Amazingly the wee thing survived and has grown into a lovely natured young dog.  We had to drive 2 hours to pick him up from a neighboring town.

Champ on the drive home

We stopped for lunch in a park on the way home and bonded over ham scraps from our wraps.

And when we got him home we realised he was way too big for Cosmo's old bed (that the cat loves to sleep in) so we bought him a new bed.  However he had to check them all out for size.

... and this bed was too small....

Lulu is not impressed but after a week will sleep in her high bed in the same room.  The introduction is going as well as it can I think.

Ciao kittens... more quilting soon.