Starry Night

I'm really excited to see the upcoming film about Vincent Van Gogh. I was lucky enough to see one of his paintings in Madrid a couple of years ago and was surprised at the vividness of the colours used. Anyway, this is my ode to Vincent - a collage created by my class of 5 - 6 year olds, everyone did a little bit. We did this as part of our topic 'Electric Rainbow', which included light, electricity, colours etc. We used tissue, foil, oil pastels and art straws to create our piece of work.

I'll just leave you with this lovely video clip:

Felt Food

I tried this year to cut back on Christmas spending - I wanted a traditional Christmas, that included giving homemade gifts. But alas, things didn't go to plan and I didn't have as much time as I needed, but still managed a couple of things...

Some felt sushi for my granddaughter no.1. I used sparkly blue felt, with silver ric rac and liberty fabric, 'Little Troy', for the scales, and a handmade felt rose for the decorative vegetable.

and 2 felt vegetarian pizzas for granddaughter 2 and grandson1. I spotted a Chupa Chups sweetie pizza - which was great for the box.

Remembering....

Well I've been up since the wee hours doing a little sewing. 

I really want to finish this by Christmas. So I decided last night that I wouldn't make it any bigger and now I am squaring off the sides. It fits a double bed.

 Sadly my dad passed away a few nights ago and after another busy few days rushing around to arrange his funeral with one of my brothers, I can now sit and think and remember, and be happy that he is now at peace with mum, his darling wife who he grieved so much for over the past 4 years. 

Mum loved to sew, knit and cook, always busy with a large family and dad loved his gardening and was very creative himself. So I think it's rubbed off on me. 

Good night, God Bless both x

Liberty SOS Quilts

I must tell you all about this wonderful Charity Quilt initiative by Alice Caroline for Romanian Orphans. I was intrigued by this when I heard about it and as usual, had all good intentions of sending off a quilt of my own using the wonderful Liberty fabrics. Alas I am far too slow at making them, probably because I sew by hand. So maybe next year. However my daughter is currently in London for a few weeks and popped into Liberty, so I asked her to look out for the SOS quilts on display. I have decided that I need to see them for myself and will pop along soon. They're on display until October 21st 2016. 

Well to update, I did go to London to see the quilts. We left Wales at 7am and were back by 7.30pm. London is always hard going but this was a good trip on a Sunday as we pre-booked parking for £12 at Victoria Station. We walked (we were going to get a tube/bus pass, but we decided to walk) on to St James Palace in time for the changing of the guards and a quick visit for my husband to pop into the Soldier shop for his Britain's metal soldiers that he likes to collect. Then on to Liberty where the quilts were displayed on the balconies as you can see from the photo, with more folded and piled up at another display. (I do hope they get rotated!) Such generosity of the quilt makers - must be a wrench to let go of such hard work - but all to a good cause. Like I said earlier, the quilts were machine sewn - so maybe a bit quicker (just a bit!) than I can whip them up. 

A chance to see the gorgeous rows and rows of Liberty Fabric - just like being in a sweet shop, but alas the prices!! £23.50 a metre. Of course it is available on Ebay for cheaper - but intriguing detective that I am, I have tracked down the factory that prints the fabric in the UK. So guess what - I'm off to their outlet shop on Thursday. It's a long journey to Lancaster that requires a stay over in a spa hotel - poor me!! But hopefully I'll stock up on some bargains. 

Birthday for a little girl

It's our granddaughter's 2nd birthday, and a week of celebrations starting with her Baptism on Saturday. She shared the day with her cousin.

I've used Sizzix dies to make these cards.

I bought her a toy kitchen from Ikea and made a few felt goodies to go with it. 

Jam tarts that I made from felt in a vintage cake tin that I found in a charity shop

and some pasta which was super easy to make

Playing with Daddy

Holiday Hexies

I prepared lots of hexagons before setting sail on a cruise around the Mediterranean. 

These are the white fillers for my turquoise quilt which I stitched into rows of 4 flowers. I have decided to make cot sized panels of 30 coloured flowers and sew them together at the end to make stitching them together more manageable.

I even found some quiet time on the cruise to do some stitching.

Nearly finished this second panel and I'm running low on fabric so have had to order more. 

Eight weeks in and this is how much I've done so far. I've had 6 weeks off from my job (school), so in between babysitting, pottering around the garden and the usual household chores, I've spent my days sewing. As I've said before - this is my therapy, I find it relaxing, it's 'me' time.

Turquoise Liberty Quilt

Since I finished the fete goodies in early July, I've started a new quilt. I loved the way my mini doll's quilt turned out, so I decided to make a bigger one - it's nearly cot sized now, but I think I'll carry on to single bed size.

I'm on my summer holidays now for 6 weeks - so hopefully will finish this one by the end of the summer. 

Dinosaurs

We have a great museum in Cardiff which we like to visit -especially the Dinsoaur display with the woolly mammoth and lots of fossils.

Which of course inspired our classroom.....

Rahh!!!

Our Community

We studied our local community. We were...

 Community Explorers!

Another couple of boxes and a roll of garish wallpaper (Who would??) for our 2 seater Safari car.

We went orienteering in our local area, and around the park looking for clues, and also learned about the wider world neighbours, including Fairtrade.

Some collages I made earlier...with a Fairtrade theme.

Father's Day

Cards for Dad - with a chocolate centre- because he's worth it!

No. 1 Dad

Growing things

For our 'Growing' theme we had a visit to Roath park in Cardiff. 

The Botanical Garden inspired our role play area...

We created a garden centre.

Grew beans,

Learned about the parts of the plant,

and used money too!

We were inspired by the artist Georgia O'Keefe and created our own pastel drawings of flowers. 

There's a rumble in the ....

Jungle....Mini Zoo again - a repeat of a few years ago - an oldie but a goodie.

Again, an assembly performance required animal masks...the children drew around stencils that I had prepared, cut the shape out, sponge painted or printed onto them and collaged them with various buttons, hessian, etc.

We had...

lions,

Crocodiles ( we did add teeth later!), printed with bubble wrap

giraffes

gorillas

tigers

cheetahs

Cardboard bands were added to make into headresses.

Ever feel like you're being watched??