Red Brolly

Life:: Happy Mother's Day

To all the Mother's....Happy Mother's Day. Hope you all have a lovely day. I have a special day organised and hope you do too.

S.J.V.H has decorated her sideboard as a tribute to her Mother- in her Mother's favourite colours none the less! Purple and Yellow! I leave you with her gorgeous sideboard, but see you tomorrow for more stitching.

See the photo on the sideboard?...that's her mother. She may look a little familiar to you. She was the little Pears soap girl and appeared on all their soap boxes of the time.

S.J.V.H also has a french connection, whilst we're talking about families and French things. Here's her Great Grandfather...Louise Joseph Lamotte circa 1880's, in France.

She's telling me that he's the one with the accordian in the corner. S.J.V.H loves to trace the family heritage and is continually finding out new information about our family history. Do you like to trace your family tree? It was very interesting when she traced her family back to France. Just look at that finery? Could you imagine wearing dresses like that? How adorable are the children?

See you tomorrow when we wrap up our French Country Garden theme. Till then....

 

Life:: My patterns your stitching

Boy!!! Have you all been busy! Wow. I just have to give you all some inspiration of some of my patterns made your way. I just love receiving photos on facebook and seeing my flickr pools of all your lovely stitching. So grab a cup of coffee and look at this eye candy, maybe you'll see some inspiration...

A strawberry scissors keep by Evelyne

 

Sleeping cat stitched with batting underneath by Annet

Mug bags by Hege- Aren't they wonderful? Hege makes them with her Quilt Guild in Norway.

 

Another of my mug bags by Laurry. Cute photo and look at the gorgeous fabric.

 

A finished Easter sampler by Teresa- beautiful stitches!

And another one made into a pretty wall hanging by Carin

And look at this bag! The sewing is divine!

Gingham Girls Medium Carryall, made with a Yokie applique instead of my cat design by Sloveig

 

"A good friend" Stitchery by Nicole

And lastly, these 3 ladies deserve honorable mention. They are outstanding stitchers and are regular contributors to my flickr groups. They made several of my patterns to such a high standard I just had to share their stitching with you.

A Christmas stitchery for a magazine by AmPatchwork.

And her Christmas sampler stitchery- which she translated herself!

This next stitcher has made regular contributions, but recently she shared this stitching with us.

My ladies, with extra embellishments by Yootje. See the gold thread on the glasses?

 

And this quilt deserves a round of applause. It's my "Chicken Feather" quilt, but it's the baby boy version. Hasn't Maria Re done an outstanding job? I don't think mine was as good as hers. What a stitcher! Huge round of applause!

 

 

You can see more Red Brolly stitching in my flckr groups. If you'd like to see more of the Chicken Feather book, you can have a sneaky peek inside.

Don't forget you can purchase any of my patterns online from my Red Brolly shop, a Patchwork Angel, CheraBella Buttons,  or any of your favourite quilt shops listed in the sidebar heading.

Also, look in the sidebar under "make" for lots of free stitching inspiration. Thank you to everyone for sharing your stitching with me. There were lots more lovely projects I had to share with you but ran out of space.

Don't forget I'll be at the AQC today and tomorrow taking photos of you and your sister for my new bag pattern cover.

Next week I promise will be a week of stitching!

Life :: Come and say hello at the AQC in Melbourne

Life:: A stunning Easter sideboard

      
    Just a minute- the phone's ringing. 

    It's SJVH! (my sister-in-law).

    She's having a pre-Easter morning tea - AND a big reveal of her just -     decorated Easter Sideboard!

   Can't wait- if you can hold on a minute - I'll tidy myself up a little.

  That's better.

  Hop in the car and off I go!

   Camera in hand.

   I'm now at SJVH's house- she's saying "Come in and have some Scones and cream!"

  Oh my goodness- the scones are hot out of the oven- and she's made tea!

  And home-made stawberry jam!

  I'll just load up this fluffy little melt-in- the mouth scone with some jam and cream.........

   You'll have to excuse me while I indulge.

   Have a look at the photo's of SJVH's absolutely stunning Easter  Sideboard ("yes thanks- just a tad of milk in the tea")  while I'm .......busy!

 

 

   I bet you now have lots of great ideas for your very own  Easter     Sideboard! And don't forget the scones!

 

Life:: My little secret revealed

Great news!   I've been very busy working on a little secret project.

TA-DA!!!!

Something I've been wanting to do for ages. It's taken me a lot of work to get to this point...but I now have my very own online shop. You can purchase your Red Brolly patterns here as well as little bits of exciting sewing related goodies. I'll also be distributing my own patterns for wholesale! Which is very exciting. Lots of goodies to come...but it's a start. If you'd like to check it out, click here or on the shop button above.

Let me know what you think.

Life's a Picnic..would you like to come?

I had a lovely summer holiday. I had lots of time to spend with family and friends and catch up with everyone. It was a hot summer here in Australia and there's still some glimpses of summer days remaining, but you can feel the weather starting to slightly turn into autumn. One of the things I've decided to do on the blog this year is to do craft and stitching projects around particular themes. I thought it might be something fun!

So to start the year off and remind us of the summer almost gone, will be the theme...."Life's a picnic!" Don't you just love going on a picnic? Time to just watch and chat, eat, enjoy the company and just "be." Anyway, I've got lots of lovely sewing projects, delicious recipes, craft ideas, paper craft projects and lots of inspiration for your next picnic. Would you like to come on a picnic with me?

Over the break I had the opportunity to spend some time with the family and one of the fun things we got to do together was go berry picking. It's been ages since I went and picked my own berries. You don't see the "Pick your own Berry" farms around as much any more.

So I grabbed the grandkidlets and off we went. We had a really enjoyable morning at Montrose Berry Farm, a gorgeous heritage listed sandstone house set in beautiful gardens and surrounded by the working berry farm.

On what was a rather warm day, we grabbed our hats and our containers and we first headed towards the blackberry patch.

Lots of yummy blackberries, and the girls were very good...they hardly ate any, though some taste testing was required!

Unfortunately we had just missed the loganberry season and they had a bad season with the blueberries, but we had a great morning none the less.

With our containers full we headed back to get our berries weighed. Whilst we were there, we discovered a cute little kitchen selling jams, vinegars, sauces and ....berry tarts! Small, rustic, freshly made berry tarts. They were the perfect treat to have after a busy morning picking. We just had to try them.

Ok, maybe just another bite...
Now, what should I do with all these berries? Have you any ideas?

Hope you decide to come on my picnic with me. See you tomorrow.

Red Brolly returns next week

 

Dear Hearts,

I've had a very relaxing yet busy holidays. The Red Brolly blog will return next week and will be starting the year off with a super stitching project for you. Lots of new designs, tips, hints, craft and sewing to come. Here's a hint as to what the first theme of the year will be.

See you next week.

Lights, music, markets, marching girls and tulips

I spent a lovely weekend in Bowral in the Southern Highlands of NSW, celebrating it's annual Tulip time festival. Something I've been going to with the family since the beginning. It was lots of fun...marching bands, a main street parade, open gardens, tulips, markets, shopping, buskers, lunching, shopping, spring weather, high tea and tulips after dark. A fab weekend was had by all! Here's a snap shot of the weekend...

(please note some photos are courtesy of Southern Highlands News as my camera battery died!...Who hasn't had this happen at a crucial time?)








This spot here holds a special memory...in my son's younger years, he fell in the water! I had to jump in and rescue him. Something we've never let him live down.

Hope you had a lovely weekend.

My purse patterns

Have you seen this months issue of Australian Homespun magazine? Look who's on the front! Little ol' me and my purse pattern.

If you haven't already gone out and purchased this month's copy- in it you'll find the instructions and patterns for making 2 ...yes 2, of my purses! Here's what they look like...

This is the cute little purse that made it onto the cover.

And here's the other design...

Both equally as cute I say. Would make a great little gift for a stitching friend.

Which design is your favourite?

What about moi? The Blueberry Girls get huffy.

 

Remember my Blueberry Girls? With all the fuss going on with "The Wish" Christmas Quilt giveaway, they think that they've been forgotten. I just wanted to pop in over the weekend and share with you this fabuous finished Blueberry Girls quilt by Cat Nix who is the wonderful lady behind the blog, "Crazy about Quiltin."

I must admit that I've had these photos for a little while and have been meaning to share them with you. Hope you enjoy seeing them as much as I did. The Blueberry Girls quilt she made has turned out beautifully don't you think?

Did you see all the teeny-tiny beautiful stitching? Great job I think. If you'd like to see more then head on over to Crazy about Stitchin'. Fingers crossed this will keep the Blueberry Girls quiet for awhile.

Hopefully you're all busy stitching this weekend. I'm about to release another part of the Wish Quilt, I'm just waiting for a few to catch up- so get ready.