My supermodel!

OK so this is extremely self indulgent, but my baby girl was a model yesterday for my sisters business and she was sooo amazing I just have to share some of the pictures :)

You may remember my Emma from this picture :)

In these pictures Emma was barely 6 months old and she was a perfect model! She sat and posed for ages and was still happy right till the end of the shoot :) I'm sure her gorgeous face on the cover of my Sit Me Up Donut pattern is the reason it has been so popular :)

Well that was nothing! Yesterday my nearly 2 year old Emma was a perfect model for Cutie Bum Nappies! She had at least 10 costume changes over about 4 hours and she was still smiling! She did exactly what we asked every time! She only required a few marshmellows and Chocolate! Chocolate, Chocolate!! at the end as payment ;)

 How cute are these shoes!!!

 She really does have a Cutie Bum!!!

She even started posing in the end hahaha what a superstar!!

 Anyway these are just a sneek peak from the amazing photographer Bianca at Bianca Dopson Photography. She is an award winner amazing photographer who is based in our little town on the South Coast of NSW. Thank you soooo much Bianca!

My sisters website is currently being constructed (which is what these pictures are for) but you can see all of Jo's gorgeous products on ebay, or keep up to date on her Facebook page.

Isn't my baby just adorable!!!

Hugs Paula

The amazing Hooterville by Quilter Wendy Williams!

The Amazing Wendy Williams has been a guest tutor at My Patch a few times now (and will be again in September). The last time was to teach her amazing Quilt called Hooterville. I must admit I've been meaning to do this post for months, but something else always got in the way... anyway, sit back and enjoy some pictures from the Hooterville workshop.

There was about 8 ladies and a few hangers on ( that would be me and Val, the owner of My Patch hehe)

On the first day of the workshop the ladies made the background of the quilt using Black and Grey linens. Wendy uses alot of Pearle 8 threads in her quilts.

On day 2 the ladies were making their embroidered and appliqued leaves and flowers.

  If you ever get to take a workshop with Wendy I highly recommend her! She is so inspirational, knowledgable and just a lovely person!

 Most of the applique shapes are made with wool felt and some have fabrics appliqued on top of the felt. There is a huge amount of embroidery included in the shapes with all the old fashion stitches, like fly stitch, whipped stitches etc etc.

 By the end of the weekend we put all the girls pieces that they had made, on one of the backgrounds and we had  an almost complete quilt.

 It was sooo soooo pretty! Oh how I wish I had time to make one of these quilts! When we had it hanging in the shop I just couldn't stop stareing at it! Everytime I looked I would see something different, from different embroidery stitches to different fussy cut fabrics, its just a stunning quilt!

Seriously who wouldn't love one of these quilts hanging in their home!

 Just to show you what an amazing talent Wendy is, she was awarded a 3rd place at the Sydney Quilt Show this week in the Professional Predominately Applique category for this quilt titled 'Growing Up'. Considering the Best of Show got the 1st place in this category, you can imagine how amazing this quilt is in person.

I hope you love Wendy's work as much as I do! You can visit her website here, you can see the award winning Sydney Quilt show Quilts here or you can buy Wendys patterns from My Patch Fabrics here.

The full shots of Hooterville and Growing Up were borrowed from Wendys website

On a personal note, If you have a weak stomach I suggest you don't look at the next picture.

 I've experienced the joy of raising a boy this week when my son Jack decided it would be a good idea to jump off the trampoline onto our concrete driveway... he didn't fall, there is a cage around the tramp. He decided he didn't want to get down on the step so he jumped. He smashed his head into the concrete and then as he got up he was so dazed he hit his head on the skip bin we have for our pre-move clean up. Needless to say we have spent the last 2 days at the hospital with a concussion and a suspected broken leg.

My poor little man is finding it very hard to sit still with his sore foot, so he's been crawling around the house hehehe.

I'm sure he'll be fine, but it was quite a shock at the time. Oh the joys of boys! Thank goodness I only have one boy, don't think I could cope with this too often ;)

I hope you have a great weekend.

Hugs Paula

PS. Don't forget to join me on Facebook to see my works in progress and more regular updates, the link is up there on the right hand side of my blog :)

Winners

I'm so happy every time I'm able to giveaway one of my new patterns and this time I'm especially happy because the winners have been really supportive of me for sometime!
First up was:

That was Judy who said:

Hi Paula,

Wow two terrific patterns to join your collection. Clever girl and oh so practical. This nanna reckons she might need to get stitching on on one of those Snuggle Mummys as grandchild #3 is on the way.

Katie-pilla is just ideal for our newest grand daughter, now ten weeks old.

The second winner was: 

Gorgeous new patterns as always!! You are so talented!! :)
Melissa Harris, Narrawallee

Thank you so much to those who entered! Judy and Melissa I will be in contact today :)

Have a great weekend! I'm working at My Patch tommorow while my Mum will also be there teaching a Quilt finishing workshop, so It's sure to be a great start to the weekend for me :)

Hugs Paula

My new Baby! Sewing Machine that is ;)

I thought it was just me, I thought I just couldn't free motion quilt for the life of me!! I did try I really did, but I just couldn't get my projects to move smoothly under the needle and so my free motion was always jerky and the stitch sizes where wayyyy from even!

To be honest, I decided that I hated free motion and so I took up hand quilting instead.

That was of course until I found my new baby girl!

 I wasn't the only one who was excited to bring her home! Sorry about the poor photos, I was too excited about opening my new machine to stop and get my good camera out ;)

 I wasn't even allowed to take the plastic off without help :)

 And here she is! My new Husqvarna Vicking Sapphire 875!

What sold me on the Sapphire 875 was first of all the huge throat space and second was seeing the Yarn Couching foot and having a play with it. It is basically free motion quilting, but your stitches are hidden in the Yarn, so it doesn't matter if your stitches are even, because you don't even See them!

I made this cushion the night before the milton show. I used a quilting stencil and a chalk pounce to apply the design to a square of fabric, I then used the yarn couching foot and some 8 ply wool to free motion quilt the design onto the fabric. I also used some tear away on the back to stabalise the fabric.

I can't express how much fun this is to do :)

I also used the gathering foot to make the ruffle. The beauty of the gathering foot is that it both gathers and attatches the gathered fabric and whatever you want to attatch it to at the same time! Makes life much easier! No more basting and then pulling the threads to gather, its all done for you! Can you imagine how quick it would be to make a little gathered skirt!

 Anyway back to the free Motion... I guess my confidence was rising because I went looking for some free motion designs and of course my first stop was Day Style Designs. They have some amazing free motion designs and my favourite is the Flower Ball.

So I had a go and this was my first attempt at the it :)

It turns out that the fabric was sort of sticking to my old machine making it impossible to move it smoothly. The new machine is so much smoother and easier to free motion quilt on. So it wasn't just me and my lack of persistance! It was the throat of my old machine!

I was so extatic! So I got out the quilt I wanted to use this design on and got busy. I'm about a third of the way through it and I am just sooo happy with my machine!

I'm not the only one either :) My Mum sat down and saw how big the throat space is and she is very excited to be picking up her new 875 tommorow tehehe. So If your a quilter or just looking to upgrade your machine I highly recommend The Husqvarna Viking Sapphire 875!

I bought my Sapphire from My Patch Fabrics in Milton NSW Australia. The Sapphire is on special until the end of this week for $2299 and includes a Dual Feed walking foot and the quilting extension table.

I was not paid for this post in anyway. I'm just a very happy customer!

Hugs Paula

Some of these pictures were borrowed from the Husqvarna Viking website.

Milton Uladulla Quilt Show

If you've been following me on Facebook you know that this weekend was the Bi-annual Milton Ulladulla Quilt Show. This is not a judged show, but there is prizes for the peoples choice and a few other categories... Unfortunately I had to leave before the awards were handed out, but I did get the chance to take some pictures, so I thought I would share the pictures with you.

This was the raffle Quilt that welcomed us as we walked into the Ex-servos club. A stunning Quilt that was made by the Milton Quilters, I didn't win it unfortunately...

I got there super early this morning because yesterday we were so busy on our stand that I didn't even get to see the quilts, I was so early that the ladies hadn't even cracked open the bag of White gloves :)

 There was some beautiful Quilts!

This one featured a different take on the Jacobs Ladder block and some stunning hand embroidery.

 I was very taken with this lovely New York Beauty!

 There was a huge amount of Baltimore style quilts too, I loved the swag border on this quilt

 I was extremely impressed by this 1/2" hexy quilt! It's still in progress but wow there is a ton of hexagons in this insanity quilt!

I was totally taken with the quality of the needleturn in this quilt! The colours were just stunning to! It was one of my favourite quilts of the show.

 Here's a close up, just beautiful work!

 My Mum is working on a version of this quilt, its lovely.

 Another thing I noticed about the show was that there was a large amount of machine embroidery, this one was a wallhanging.

 Some really lovely work.

 Here was another of my favourites! Made by a really close friend of my Mums, Margaret made this quilt. It was designed by Aussie designer Libby Richardson.

 There was so much detail in this quilt and heaps of gorgeous buttons!

This quilt was Huge! at least a King Bed size.

 And my favourite Wallhanging was this stunning quilt. It was hand painted and some stunning quilting!

Heres a close up of the beautiful little fairy.

  A cute version of the bugs quilt, I just love the bright fabrics

 This quilt was so effective. It is a Quilt as you go, flip and stitch style quilt.

Heres another favourite, it combines a heap of 3D pieces and the New York beauty block.

 This lady made me laugh! I love the scissors in her hair hahaha

 Here have a closer look :)

 Here's a few of the things I made for our stand, did I tell you I bought a new sewing Machine? It is amazing!! I'm totally smitten with my new Husqvarna Viking Saphire 875, I used some of the fancy stitches on the machine to make this embroidered piece for the stool and I used the new Couching foot for the cushion and some leftover binding to add the ruffle using the ruffling foot. It took about half an hour from start to finish! The free motion couching is definately my favourite thing to do at the moment :)

 This is where I spent the weekend. I was demonstrating the Westalee Rulers and we sold out, it was a fantastic weekend!

Sorry the picture is a bit blurry, but this is our block of the month, a Wendy Williams Quilt. Also the start of my new quilt using the Dresden Plate rulers again from Westalee Designs.

I hope you had as great a weekend as I did!

Hugs Paula