A helping hand

 Felix, 3 years, offers a helping hand.

My day #1

Pattern: Just like the previous times we used the Noodlehead divided basket pattern.

Fabric: The fabric is Dots and Stripes from the Up Up and Away and Free as a Bird collection of Skinny laMinx also designed for Cloud 9. The elephant fabric is from Jay-Cyn designed for Birch Fabrics.

Decoration

Slowly we have started. The boxes are all being emptied. We do not yet have a new couch but a new pillow case is since this weekend a fact! 

It felt glorious to finally make something for myself. I hope it survives at least a couple of pillow fights.

Couleur locale

The last two days our eldest skipped school and she is enjoying the couleur locale.

She is waiting, rehearsing and learning from the 400 Emirati school kids around her.

And tomorrow, well that we will tell you later.

In the meanwhile enjoy this video fragment.

Tender, Love, and Care

Recently my cellphone didn’t work properly. All my contacts, videos and pictures got lost. Luckily some of it could be restored but not everything.

To avoid future problems I decided to give my phone a good portion of TLC. So I made my phone a jacket.

A cover made from recycled paper!

The outside is made from solid brown paper, the inside is covered with felt.

To avoid my phone to lose its jacket I added a piece of webbing with a magnet in the end. The opposite site of the magnet is hidden between the felt and the paper.

The cover is already in use for a little while now and is still in a very good condition. And … my phone works without flows, so he clearly loves its new cover as much as I do!

Silence

Since the beginning of March it was very quiet on this blog. I never really have a lot of spare time but the last two months were even more hectic than usual. We unexpectedly and very suddenly had to move houses. So finding a new place, moving all our stuff and finding new routines with the kids did not leave a lot of time to get online reading your blog posts let alone writing myself.

Meanwhile things are slowly getting back to normal. I have a sitting area, a new chair and even our very own Alcea Rosea!

I already found some time to sew and we are online again. I can’t wait to share what we have been making and I am dying to add some personal touches to our new rental house.

Ten fingers and ten toes

You were warned about the upcoming baby boom and you already saw the diaper basket; but baby Alfons is finally born, so we present you the rest of his presents!

He got three lovely blankets! He might live in a warm country, but the air-conditioning is often set way to low so he might as well have enough blankets. His mum choose the fabrics and we buckled down to the details.

The smallest blanket (85cm on 70cm) is made of a layer of soft white interlock and a layer of flannel with very nice turqouise elephants. Both layers are separated by blooming yellow piping.

A second blanket (100cm on 75cm) is made of the same white interlock on the one side and very soft white teddy fabric on the other side. Both sides are attached to each other with a wide band of hand cut bias binding.

As a decorative element we heat-pressed a penguin on the blanket as Alfons his dad is crazy about those cute creatures.

A third blanket with the same measurements as the last one is also made of flannel and interlock; this time around both layers are attached to each other according to her guidelines.

Although we made 3 blankets according to 3 different methods I am still not able to determine to which method I give preference.

I am a super fan of putting piping in between two layers as the color of the piping can gorgeously accent the fabric. Nevertheless the other methods also have their charm and there was not a big noticeable difference in time it took to make the different blankets.

Alfons also got a towel with his name embroidered on it. We almost always give this to newborns, but this one was a special one as we embroidered his name entirely as it was written on his birth announcement.

Have a blissful life Alfons!

Fabric: The organic flannel with the elephant print and the one with the globules are from Rae Hoekstra from the Fanfare collection designed for Cloud9 Fabrics. The wide grey band of bias binding was cut out a piece of Kokoro Gris from Petit Pan.