Quilts & creaturefying babies...

Hello lovelies, here's a little more of the silk quilt that I'm making for my mother. The quilt is basically squares set on point around a central panel. Some of the squares of silk are interspersed with a delicious Liberty lawn, so I chose to recreate the flower heads from the Liberty print in the central panel.

I recreated the flower heads by cutting up tiny misshapen pieces of silk and then appliquéd them using a closed zigzag stitch.

I never normally put my appliqué work in a hoop, but on my last visit to the local haberdashers I found that they had very inexpensive spring-bound hoops (I think they were priced around £4) and one found its way into my basket. Although it's not strictly necessary, it's nice to have the fabric so well stretched out and it felt like a little less work to move the hoop, rather than the fabric. Unlike an embroidery hoop, this hoop allows the fabric to sit flat against the bed of the machine.

Appliqué has found its way into my projects less and less over recent years, perhaps because my children have become older, but every time I use this technique I remember how very much I love this way of sewing and how incredibly satisfying it is.

While we're on the subject of children, I feel compelled to share with you something I came across on Pinterest last night.

This photo is the property of Wild Things

I find these dresses almost unbearably cute. As I said on Pinterest, when I look at them I find myself wishing for another baby purely for the purpose of being able to squeeze her into one of them. For those of you that have a real life baby to creaturefy, you can find the clever Etsy seller who makes them here. Delightfully, the shop name is Wild Things, which will hold double appeal to any fans of the Maurice Sendak book.

On the subject of children dressing up as animals, this was something that once they reached toddlerhood, both my children delighted in, but as babies, my husband and I took the rather peculiar stance that dressing them up as animals without their agreement was infringing on their dignity...I now wonder at all the fun we missed out on, as I now think they would love looking at photographs of their baby selves dressed as all sorts of forest creatures (we were very young when we had our first child and somewhat earnest in our approach to our new role as parents...just thinking about this now makes me laugh). Are there any things that you decided upon for your babies that you now look back upon with bemusement?

Florence x