Take One ...

Take one pack of co-ordinating tea towels, wash and unpick the edges,

one piece of foam,

one cheap chest (full of bird food, cat food, gardening gloves etc)

instigate some late night sewing,

and voila - one covered seat in the still relatively tidy conservatory.

With the sweet little bird cushion (a £10 purchase from Dunelm) it looks, and feels, rather a pleasant place to have breakfast or a cuppa.

Remember mum's loft? It looked like this at the end of July

well now it looks like this

it's not totally finished but it's getting there.  

Amongst yesterday's discoveries was this handle and wires in a lovely wooden box.  

After asking on twitter I now know the wires are ties for sacks the handle twists them together.  I'm guessing it was something to do with my fenland family but I have no idea why there are so many, but you know who to ask now should you ever need to tie a sack up!

The Secret Sewing Project (part 1)

Over the summer I received an email from Celia with an offer she knew I wouldn't be able to resist - would I like some free fabric from her new fabric collection to do what I liked with and blog about?  I didn't take long to reply and very soon a lovely parcel arrived

which contained three pieces of the most gorgeous printed linen cotton canvas in beautiful designs and colours.

I decided to use the 'stone' hearts design to make a very simple cushion as I knew it would be perfect in my lounge.

Just some rounded corners and on the back a co-ordininating plain fabric with some beautiful matching buttons I found to set off Celia's lovely design

and it looks perfect on my sofa.

Next I decided to make myself a case for my work iPad using the two designs in the 'sea' colourway.

It's padded and I used a co-ordinating fabric to line it

I used a different heart on the back 

and the elastic pops round the button to secure it.

I'm going to enjoy using this case in all the schools that I visit this year.

You can buy all of Celia's fabrics here from her Spoonflower shop

Now some of you may be wondering why this post is titled 'part 1' - it's because, due to a supply failure  (ie I've run out of something I need to finish it and, due to manic work commitments, haven't been able to get anywhere to get some more!) the other item I'm making is still a work in progress - but here's a little taster of it

It will be revealed asap, I promise.

Thank you Celia letting me have some of these lovely fabrics to play with - do pop over to her blog and those of the other secret sewers, Tracy and Gina, to see what they made too - there are some amazing things :-).

Edited - 'unfinished project' is now finished and blogged about here (there's a give-away too!)