sweet felt ornaments

Every year, I make some hand made ornaments,

this year I played with felt

and used this pattern "Kitschy ornaments" from Wild Olive.

And I think they turned out great!

On these ones, I left out the eyes and smile, but I am planning on making more

and this time, with all the details.

They seem a little large for this tree but we will soon have a live large tree 

and they should be just the right size.

The poinsettia is one of my favorites, lots of details and layers,

the holly is very charming with all of its flakes,

and the wreath is just so cute!

These ornaments are fairly simple to make, but all the embroidery details make them very special!

Last year, I also used a pattern from Mollie,

I guess I am a fan!

Little owls in wooden frames.

Happy sewing!

working on presents

With a low key Thanksgiving, I have been able to start working

on my list of Christmas presents.

I am so glad I finished my tree skirt early,

work has changed for the better: I work for a bigger biotech and full time

which leaves me very little time for the fun stuff,

like sewing and crafting!

I need to simplify and adapt my sewing and my expectations to my time.

On top of that, Mon Cheri was injured last week end while cutting some wood with a chop-saw!

He had seen me admiring some projects with wood slices,

like this one and this one from Finding Home

and wanted to surprise me with some delicate slices of branches to play with.

I have them and I also spent 5h in the ER with him and a bloody thumb!

I can barely look at those slices, and we do not know how the finger thing is going to turn out....

I guess it is a wait and see game.

Happy sewing!

tree skirt: finished!

I started working early on a tree skirt this year,

and surprisingly it is finished, weeks before it is needed,

it is so amazing....I am one of those people that do 90% of the work ahead of time

and then have to rush to complete everything!

Well......"not today, Zurg!"

I used fabrics from Moda Winter's lane and Blitzen from Basic Grey

(left over from last year project: Reindeer pillow)

and some quilting linen, a mix of linen and cotton

(it is more expensive than 100% linen, but keeps it shape beautiful, perfect for quilting!)

The back is an mix of animal prints (left over from Miss. C.'s safari birthday party),

a little unusual, but it looks great with the binding,
and it goes on the floor so nobody should see it...

The binding is a lot wider than traditional binding,
considering the scale of the piecing, I thought it would balance nicely.

Now I only need to wait a few more weeks to get the tree
and really try it,
I am thinking of a woodsy/nature Noel for this year,
we shall see if it really happens....
so many ornaments, so little time!

Happy sewing!

learning French pastry

Over the past 2 months, I have spent a lot of time cooking,

learning the secrets of French pastry.

You would think that being French I would know,

but it is not a requirement when you leave the country! :)

(you do not get an Eiffel tower either!)

So I went to L'Academie de Cuisine, a French cooking school,

and learned the proper techniques.

 You might have heard of it through Top Chef,

Carla Hall graduated from this culinary school.

There were 9 students in the class and we worked hard

and ate a lot of good desserts that we sometimes shared with our family...

Our instructor was Chef Samantha Weigand,

she made it all seem so easy....which it is not really!

So here some of the pastry we made:

In case you are wondering, yes there is a lot of butter in all these!

the apple tart was my favorite dessert,

and Mon Cheri enjoyed the cheese straws.

The cake was Miss C.'s favorite!

The lemon tart was also a favorite of the adults,

but Brick Master's least favorite,

he ate everything else, I mean, he ate most of the croissants and brioches!

He was most helpful in making my homework disappear....

Thank you Chef Sam!

I remade a lot of the desserts at home,
but I am not sure I will make my own croissant or puff pastry from scratch,
it is so much work and there is so much butter.....
it does taste like the real thing!

Happy day!

Little sister's Bday

Late spring, my sister left the US for Paris.

We do not get to see each other as often,

but we did get to spend some time together during our August trip.

It was fun to discover her life there

and crashed at her place!

Bon anniversaire, ma soeur!

a little drawstring bag for a present

Earlier this summer we received a great news:

Toddler K (previously know as Baby K!) is going to be a big sister!

I am going to be an aunt for the second time!

So while we were in France, we purchased a little PJ from a nice boutique,
since we did not know the baby's gender, we went with a classic grey color and a soft cloud collar.
We just found out it will be a little boy, the PJ will be perfect.

I could not send this little PJ just by itself,
so I sewed a little drawstring bag, using this pattern from In Color Order.
Over the last couple of years, I made quite a few of them,
they are perfect for gift-giving or laundry bags!

For this occasion, Peter Rabbit fabric was my first choice!
But I chose to not choose the part of the fabric with Peter,
instead I used the other characters like Benjamin Bunny and Squirrel Nutkin.
To complement the pictures, I also used some aqua gingham, some white on white cotton for the inside,
and a satin ribbon that perfectly matches Benjamin Bunny's hat.

Happy sewing!

on the wild side: tiger hats

Walking on the wild side?
It is starting to get cold in the morning,
 Miss C. needed something to keep her warm while walking to school.
So I made her a tiger hat.

Of course I also made one for her doll!

I used the simplicity pattern 1514.
It is fast and easy, but the tiger fabric is a pain to work with, it makes a mess during cutting,
it is slippery during stitching....I found it is best to use rotary cutter instead of scissors,
and sew the fur on top and the fleece on the bottom.
(it is especially important for the doll version where the seams are 1/4")

It comes with pockets to keep fingers toasty,
and paw prints, can it get any better?!

While the big dolls are able to have the same tiger hat,
(it is part of the pattern)
Camille is a lot smaller, so I made her a simple beanie hat,
with a rectangle of fur, and a fur yo-yo.

Ready to come with us for a walk on the wild side?



Happy sewing!

it starts to look like fall...

Fall is here, lots of leaves to rake in the yard,

cool weather (the heater has been turned on),

the dolls have their new outfits,

the only thing missing was some fall decor in our house.

I had great plans, especially after my Halloween Hunt a couple weeks ago...

Well it did not work out at all,

so bad and sad that I do not want to go into the details...

(but it did involve some paint and foil, there is always Christmas)

So I went with something easy,

and it did make me happy in the end:

I decorated our sideboard in the dining room, with a variety of pumpkins, real and glass;
(how fitting to have a glass Cinderella pumpkin since I made Cinderella dresses for everybody!)

and pottery: the green one is from Miss C.'s pottery class,

the beautiful orange and black comes from a South West Native American tribe,

the yellow pitcher holding the flowers is from PB.

And no setting is complete without a proper drink collection!

Of course the amazing banner is really the most interesting part for me.

I received as a gift from Chartreuse and Co,

perfect for somebody who enjoys paper crafting!

A non fall related news, but totally inspired by vintage things,
we purchased some new chairs for the dining room.
I guess we are going for vintage industrial look....
I have plans for the IKEA bookcase,
hopefully it will work better than my fall plan!

Happy day!

I am linking this post to Primitive And Proper who organized the Halloween Hunt.

dolls celebrate Fall too!

Fall is here and more importantly spooky time!

Miss C and I had a fun time recycling some of her clothes

into Halloween outfits appropriate to go to school....

no costume allowed!

It all started with a pair of stripped legging,

we cut off the bottoms of the legs and made a mini for Polly (no sewing required),

and a skirt for Camille (a little sewing, an elastic waist was added).

Her top is made of a cut-off sock! Yes she is that slim!

For Mathilde, I sewed a pair of legging out of the same legging.

With some skull knit, I made a t-shirt using Liberty Jane free t-shirt pattern.

Happy sewing!

leather tablet holders: how to by Mon Cheri

Happy Columbus Day!

For a change of pace, Mon Cheri has the day off, so he's making a post.

Take it away...

Morgane went on the Haloween Hunt on October 5th and met the Graphics Fairy in real life and explained that I used some graphics for a project, so I'd like to show off the result.

I made two leather tablet holders as gifts:

and,

I made them using the same technique we used to transfer an image on wood to make trays and crates, ironing on the image from shelf paper.

I put together images from the Graphics Fairy, printed them on the contact paper, then ironed onto two brass plates.  This is what the plates looked like before I ironed on the images; 

The brass plates were cut from a door kickplate using a hacksaw.  The images were formatted in Open Office.  The only tricky part is the lettering, you have to convert the text to an image and then transform it to the mirror image before transferring it to the contact paper.  If you don't perform this transformation, the writing comes out backwards.

  

A careful examination of the world map shows it is backwards in the picture for this reason.

As for the rest of the project, Morgane made the fabric liner.  I cut the leather, tooled it, dyed it, and sewed it all together by hand.  I acquired all the tools, leather, and dye from Tandy leather company.  I used a 4-5 ounce leather cowhide and water based dyes.  I made up my own decorative design for the cover flaps and cut it with an exacto knife, then pounded the image into the leather using metal stamps.

The Graphics Fairy is a great resource to add customization to projects like this.  Thanks Graphics Fairy! 

Thank you Mon Cheri for sharing your art work,

they turned out really well!

Happy day!

working early on a tree skirt

It might be early to start on a Christmas project,

but I have a tendency to run out of time later in the season,

so maybe this year, my Noel quilt will be actually ready on time....

It has been a while since I worked on a quilting project,

well a not paper pieced project!

(I need to remove the blue marking guide line!)

A couple of weeks ago, I visited my local quilt store,
and just could not stop admiring their new Christmas collection,
and this book: Simply Modern Christmas, by Cindy Lammon.

I had not purchased a quilting book in years,

I found most of them too easy or not my style, I guess I was not inspired by them,

I see so many more inspiring designs and quilts on blogs.

(and I have a lot of quilting books from many years of "collecting")

Well this one was different, not too easy but nothing challenging either,

it felt ...right!

So I chose some fabric from Moda Winter's lane,

added some quilting linen that I had been saving

( I decided to use the good stuff right away instead of waiting!)

and some Christmas fabric from last year (Blitzen from Basic Grey), 

the one is used on my reindeer pillow.

I set out to make a tree skirt, simple and modern.

The explanations are quite good and easy to follow,

very little diagonal piecing, just for the large background pieces.

So here it is so far.

It has been pieced and quilted,

now I need to cut the circle at the center 

(quite a shame since it matches up so nicely in the center!)

and make/sew all the binding.

I am going for a wide binding, the point on the chevron is very small,

I did manage to align everything pretty nicely except for the edge,

so a little cheating is necessary....

I think it will be OK,

let's just not mention it anymore!

Happy sewing!