Clover and stitch

During the first meeting of 2024 in February, friend Ansulet Swanepoel demonstrated a rather mind-blowing technique enabling quilters to turn any photo into an actual quilt.  Yes, any photo can be printed on fabric and incorporated into a quilt, but she developed a technique whereby the photo is broken up into squares or triangles in the size of your choice and then printed on 100% white cotton.  The only prerequisite being good, high-quality photos to prevent pixelation from happening. 

After requesting a specific layout, a preliminary design was done and send for my approval.

Happy with the layout, the actual breaking up of the photos into the individual shapes started.  The printed shapes already include a 1/4" seam allowance and all pieces are numbered to simplify the process of matching the correct pieces.  All that you need to do once receiving your printed pieces, is to cut them on the edge, match them up and start stitching.

After aligning all the bits and pieces and sewing them all together, I ended up with a beautiful, quilted photo.

Me and my husband decided to use our two grandsons, Aiden and Nathan's first school year photos and made each a cushion by adding matching black and white gingham.

So, if you have a special photo you want to convert into a really special keepsake, just contact Ansulet on +27 83 406 9461 or visit her website Clover and stitch for Clover sewing products, wool as well as a variety of other stuff.

Baby Statistics Bears

I bought this design from Ofnah two years ago and at long last started embroidering them. They are such a cute memory bear containing all the statistics of a newborn baby such as the date, time, length and weight as well as baby's name.  They are 30cm (12") tall.  

Playmats done

The playmats and accessories for our two grandsons are finished and it is quite amazing what a border or two can do to a project.

Nathan's playmat

Aiden's playmat

The play pieces and dice.  I made the same for both boys.

Playmat

After embroidering nearly non-stop Saturday and Monday, all the blocks were done and I assembled the playmat in the evenings after my day job was done.

Construction playmat along the lines of Snakes and Ladders

This one also needs a border which I will do when the shops are allowed to open again.

I used the green glitter foam for the Go block

The design is from Stitchdelight and can be found here or here for South African buyers.

Playmat

Between all the other projects I am working on, this playmat is also coming along nicely with about 2/3rd of the blocks done.

For the Stop sign, I wanted to use some kind of reflective material to mimic an actual road sign and remembered these glitter foam sheets I bought a few year back.

With our Lockdown extended with another 14 days until the end of April, finishing any projects will have to wait as non essential products such as fabric stores are not permitted to be open.  And with the virus still running amok all over the world, we don't even know when we will be able to visit our kids.

Our little sheppard boy

Our kids from England have been visiting the past two weeks.  It was such a blessed time with Aiden (4) and Nathan (22 months), Megan and Mark.  The house is very quite now and with everything packed away just the memories remain.

Megan asked me to make a Sheppard's costume for Aiden's school play so while they were visiting friends on Friday morning, I came up with this.

He looks so proud.  It was such a privilege to be able to make this for him.

Baby Books 2

The other two books I embroidered from Ellen Maurer Stroh was Baby's Toys and Baby's Zoo Book.

The patterns are offered for free, so even if you don't have an embroidery machine you can download the charts for free and embroider by hand.

Baby Books

Ever since I downloaded these beautiful Baby Books of Ellen Maurer-Stroh, I wanted to embroider them - I just had to wait for the grandchildren to arrive! 

December 2016 with Aiden already turning 3 and Nathan nearly 1, I finally started embroidering them and it took about 3 months to complete with about 20 thread changes each.

I tried to have them laminated, but they were too thick.  I then just covered them with Decifix, added an eyelet in the corner and assemble with a ribbon.

I made up a packet, added their Dad's birthday present and then had it shipped over to the UK by boat as airmail suddenly went up by 33% putting it way over my budget!

The Baby Animal book contains these 12 animals: