"Birth"day girls

The newest little one to join our family is Lauren Grace, born 14 May.  Brothers Elijah 2 1/2 on the left and Josh 4 1/2 just love her to bits!  She's the calm in the storm.

And it's hard to believe, but little Emily is one.  The years fly by.  

Ooooh!

It took her a while, but she did get a little bit messy.

I tried Martha Stewart's Italian Meringue Buttercream and it was delicious.  This is a 12" diameter cake and those "Funky Letters" set fill it perfectly.

Off on a tangent....

These backpack style bags have kept me busy for the past week or so.  The pattern was a thank-you gift, and I had in mind to make a crazy quilted bag.  But that changed when I began to play with the vintage lacey pieces.  Size is about 15" x 15" with a large pocket with velcro closure.

This is my favourite with battenburg lace and the appliqued hanky on the pocket.   

The hanky is attached with little pearls rather than seeing stitches. it I added some ric rac too.  

The inside is lined with pink roses and  lots of pockets to hold stuff upright.
The bags are listed in my Etsy shop.

CQJP2012 - 2nd Block for June

This is my second block for June.  
Lots of gold in it, I think I was influenced 
by all the lovely "Fool's Gold" dyb blocks 
making their rounds right now.

These are cast on stitches with a small pearl bead tucked in.

And this is the sketch in Miss Carole Samples book "Crazy  Quilt Stitches" that I used as inspiration.  (I have permission to use the sketches.)

Lazy daisy and beaded flowers..........

..... from this sketch in the book. 

Another row, but I wandered a bit from the original, below.

This is the centre part of the bottom section.  There's quite a lot of space to fill in on the bottom part of these blocks.  The lace motif was cut from a tablecloth and embellished.  The golden swirls were from a image search on Google: "swirly patterns free".  Hundreds turn up!

This is the top corner and a button cluster.  Some of the buttons are stacked, an idea from a friend.

CQJP2012 is a challenge for participants to complete one block a month for a year and make something at the end of it.  We each submit photographs of our blocks to the CQJP2012 blog.  You can check out all the amazing selection of finished blocks, here is the link: CQJP

June's CQJP2012 block

This is June's CQJP 2012 block and the 9th block in the fan design series.  It's all silk and the patterned pieces are from silk ties.

This is a close up from my block above.  I've been using the designs from Carole Samples book "Treasury of Crazy Quilt Stitches" as inspiration, and below is the sketch from the book.  This is called a holbein stitch design. 

This is my version of the long-armed feather stitch.  Below is the sketch from Carole's book.

This is from the stem stitch design page.

A row of whipped circle flowers.

The top corner

The bottom section. Lovely lace with tiny gold beads.