August 21, 2011

Making Daisy Chains



One of my lovely daughters gave me some fabulous fat quarters for both last Christmas and my birthday.  They are really good basics, being tone-on-tone fabrics. Now I know solids are the "in-thing" at the moment, but I feel much safer using fabrics that have a bit of a pattern on them, so I am finding these fats very useful.


I have made a children's project from them and the brighter colours were ideal for the appliques and borders. It will be published later in the year so a sneak peak only for now.


One day I was looking at the pretty array of colours in their boxes and decided to design a bag using just one fat quarter for the outer bag. And so was born my "Making Daisy Chains" bag which is in Country Threads magazine this month.


Here it is peeping from the front cover:


As a child, I was always wanting to make daisy chains.  I never seemed to get the hang of keeping the flowers together in a chain and I was using what was readily available - clover flowers - but I have happy childhood memories of long days that never seemed to end, beautiful sunshine and the most wonderful backyard full of places to explore.


You can understand then why the wording on the bag is "Happiness is ... making daisy chains."


Now for some show and tell of what people have done with a couple of my free patterns ... Anita from Holland got on a roll and used my Threadcatcher pattern to make these for friends and family:


Aren't they lovely and colourful!  I hope, Anita, you have made one for yourself now! 

Sharon has shared a photo of her lovely version of The Garden Gate Pincushion.  Hasn't she done a fabulous job:


You can find both these free patterns here.
Of couse,  I'd love to see your finish product if you use the patterns.

Happy stitching!
Val

4 comments:

Shari said...

I'm not a fan of solids either. I prefer tone-on-tone because it just adds texture and depth.

What lovely projects. It must be so satisfying to see people appreciating your lovely patterns.

quilterliz said...

G'day Val. I'm not that keen on solids, though I guess for some projects they have their uses. I have had trouble with being a "no reply blogger" and I am still not sure if it is working properly yet, despite trying everything I can. Because of a house move and a new email address, it hasn't been the same since. I can't seem to change my email address in Identity, though I have ticked "show my email" So my old email address is still there !!! It's became a pain in the rear end. Take care. Liz...

Allie said...

Such pretty fabrics! Can't wait to see your children's project, Val, it looks wonderful. Your Diasy Chain bag is enough to make me hunt down that magazine, I love it! I'll see if I can find it here.

Gina E. said...

What a perfect gift - Birthday, Christmas, or any day of the year! Now I know what to tell my friends and rellies what to get me when they ask "What do you want for..."
I just bought Country Threads this week; must go and have another look at your project. That mag is one of my favourites, it always has such a nice variety of stuff.