On my other blog, The Daily Stitch, I’m giving away a copy of Fresh Quilting: Fearless Color, Design and Inspiration by Malka Dubrawsky.

Fresh Quilting is full of beautiful, inspiring, colourful projects and has become one of my favourite quilting books. If you’re an experienced quilter or just wish you were, Fresh Quilting is a wonderful book to have on your shelf.

Go over to The Daily Stitch and leave me a comment to win a copy!

Entries must be in by end of month and the winner will be chosen at random. UK residents only please.

I’m so inspired by the quilts Ashley makes at Film in the Fridge. Recently she’s done a load of strip quilts and I decided to try one. I’ve only started, but I wanted to share the update.

I haven’t finished DSD’s Heather Ross quilt yet. I only just pinned it last weekend. It’s huge. I’m scared to sew it. So I took a break to work on this new project. It’s also excited because I mixed collections which, for me, is scary!

The fabrics here include designs from ‘Modern Meadow’ by Joel Dewberry, ‘Kumari Gardens’ by Dena Designs and ‘Nature Walk’ and ‘My Happy Garden’ by Cloud 9 fabrics. I love the colours and I’m so excited to see it finished. I have no idea what I’m going to back it with but maybe an Anna Maria Horner voile?

The pictures don’t really do the fabrics justice, but I’ll try to take more when I get a little further with the project.

Crafts4Kids has set up another special voucher code just for VoucherMum.com readers!

This time you can save 10% off anything from the Stocking Fillers range with code VMXS10 by 30 Nov.

Here is more info on the range from Crafts4Kids:

Children’s Stockings are part of the Christmas tradition and much loved by kids of all ages, so if you need some ideas to give to Santa that won’t break his bank and that will inspire the kids then have a look at our Stocking Filler collection – great stocking filler gift ideas for boys and girls from across the Crafts4Kids range and all great value at under £8.50 – perfect for small gifts for the kids friends, nieces, nephews, cousins and the like too!

Also on sale right now is the Djeco Toys and Games range which is 10% off. Djeco Toys is a French toy brand that offers exquisite children’s creative art and craft sets and traditional games for kids.

Djeco offers some really cool toys, like the Djeco Felt Tips Draw a Fashion Show, a colouring and drawing set for older girls:

Finally, last weekend, I finished knitting E’s scarf and hat. In plenty of time for Winter!

Here is a picture of E in the scarf. Look how long it is – that took ages! I actually love this picture because the red in the scarf matches the red under the umbrella.

And here is the hat. This was actually quite quick:

They are both so cozy and warm. These patterns came from Knit Knack Kit: Simple Instructions and Tools for 25 Terrific Projects by Kris Percival. E gave it to me for my birthday two years ago!

Here is where things stand with my quilt project. I finally finished the star-pattern quilting and the first step of the binding. I think I’ve really made soooo much work for myself by trying to make things fancy with that quilting idea and using two fabrics for binding but I’m in the home stretch, only the hand whipstitching left to do I think!

I used this video tutorial for the binding instructions and found it really helpful. Well…maybe I shouldn’t give credit before I’m finished! If it comes out right it will have been really helpful! Thank goodness for YouTube, don’t you agree?

This weekend I taught DSD how to sew by hand and it was brilliant! I’ve tried to teach her to knit, which she likes but still struggles with a bit (she’s five and a half) and we’ve done some sewing projects on the machine that I let her help with (she presses the peddle but I admit that sometimes terrifies me!), but finally with hand-sewing she was able to do a project more or less on her own.

Sewing clothes for dolls and stuffed animals is a great way to start kids out. Our project, as you can see, was trousers for Bear (the top was the one he came with). They don’t really fit him properly as I just cut off a big square of fabric and didn’t do a lot of measuring but I don’t think that really matters – it was more about the activity than the result.

You don’t need to run out and buy fabric for this project – it’s a great way to use up your scraps or even bits of worn out clothes. DSD picked out the fabric from of my leftover quilt pieces that she determined were boy-appropriate (Bear is a boy). We picked a contrasting thread to make it easy to see the stitches and I helped her thread it on my biggest needle. Then I held the fabric tightly while she did the sewing, which made it easy to see where the next stitch would go. She caught on quickly and the level of dexterity needed for this was perfect for her. She tried big stitches and tiny close together stitches and zig-zags.

I highly recommend helping your kids learn to sew! It’s such a useful skill, it’s fun and it really doesn’t cost very much (if anything!) to do small projects like this.

Last weekend the organisers of the Knitting & Stitching Show graciously gave me and my friend L press tickets and we had a great afternoon wandering around about a million stalls full of gorgeous yarns and fabrics at Alexandra Palace.

The show was incredibly popular. I was told Sunday was the slowest day but it was busy to the point of being a bit exhausting. I’ve never seen so many knitting and sewing lovers in one place!

In addition to the shopping there were classes (which unfortunately were mostly full by the time I heard about the show) and galleries. But mainly I wanted to shop!

Here is the floor plan so you can see the incredible scope of the show.

We were first drawn to Fibres Exotica, which had the most vibrant silk yarns I’ve ever seen. This picture just does not do it justice at all. I bought some AMAZING cobalt blue yarn here and I thinking I’m going to make a neck cozy something like this.

Next we went a bit crazy for the designs of Purl Alpaca Designs.Don’t you just love that jumper?

We also fell for the incredibly soft, rich colours of Manos Maxima from Crafty Yarn. I bought the fiery red and I don’t know what I’ll do with it yet. Maybe socks?

We were also really impressed with the Toft Alpaca Shop. What is it about alpaca? I didn’t buy anything here yet but I’d love to make this jumper. You can buy the yarn with the pattern online.

I was over the moon to find Eternal Maker, a West Sussex fabric shop that imports fabrics from some of my favourites, including Anna Maria Horner. They have an online shop too!

Coats Crafts is also a brilliant shop, with FreeSpirit Fabrics. They have a great site with loads of free patterns.

We also found Loop, an Islington knitting store I haven’t been to yet, which had some gorgeous yarns as well.

And are these the biggest knitting needles you’ve ever seen? I’ve never seen anything like it!

The show is coming to Dublin and Harrogate if you’d like to go!

As it is apparently National Knitting Week (thanks to Hobbycraft for letting me know…) I thought I’d republish some tips for knitting on a budget that I originally posted on 11 September 2009 (plus a new one). Enjoy!

• NEW TIP: Read knitting blogs! Helpful and friendly knitters and knitting shops out there will share free patterns and inspirations. I’m currently spend a lot of time on the Purl Bee but there are oh so many more out there once you look.
• Join local knitting circles—when you have friends who knit you can borrow needles and books or swap yarns. In London, try Stitch and Bitch London or the knitting group and Sunday knit roast with iKnit.
• Use Google video search to find free online demonstrations when you’re trying to learn a new stitch.
• Sign up with Ravelry, the online social network for knitters, for free (and not free) patterns, advice and tips.
• Recycle yarn, either by taking apart your old clothes or shopping thrift stores for items that can be easily deconstructed. Look for pieces with seams that are woven rather than sewn, so the yarn can be pulled apart in one long piece.
• Check your council’s libraries for knitting books rather than buying them.
• Make friends with your local knitting store (or local John Lewis) so you’ll find out ahead of any sales or discounts.
• Consider substitutions. For example silk can be expensive and a silk blend or even an acrylic yarn could be just fine.
• Don’t throw anything away. Bits and bobs of extra yarn can be used to make doll clothes or in quilts, or small projects like oven mitts.
• Skip the fancy accessories. We’d all love to have a Cath Kidston knitting bag but that free tote you got in last month’s Marie Claire will do the trick and you know it!

Happy knitting!

We’ve been baking our own bread for about a month now and I’ve really enjoyed it. This week E requested a bloomer, so instead of our standard wholemeal loaves I looked up a new recipe. Oh my goodness it is HEAVEN! I’m eating a piece right now, warm, with butter, and it is so decadent. Our best loaf yet.

I adapted this recipe from BBC Good Food but I bought a new kind of yeast that doesn’t come in sachets so I had to modify it. I also used a tip from Budget Bytes, one of my new favourite food blogs, which recommended putting a pan of water in the bottom of the oven to create steam.

Here is the result. E actually said “oooh!” when I pulled it out of the oven, and it’s quite rare for him to get that excited over anything that is not related to Manchester United.

I’ve also been working on the quilt. I decided to try to quilt it together with a star pattern, which is taking ages but I’m so far happy with. As you can see I’m using tape to guide my sewing which was recommended by a friend.

I’ve been wanting to try quilting ever since my friend A showed me hers. She also told me about Anna Maria Horner. If you haven’t heard of Anna Maria and have a weakness for fabric, I’m warning you, don’t click this link! Anna Maria makes gorgeous fabrics and has a gorgeous family and a gorgeous life. She’s even been on Martha Stewart, for the love. It’s hard to find her fabrics here so I ordered an outrageous amount via the interwebs.

Today I took a beginner’s quilting class at Tikki, a cute patchwork shop in Kew. My Anna Maria fabrics seemed to be stuck in customs (curses!) but I discovered Tilda at Tikki and chose some some really pretty fabrics from her range. Ultimately my plan is to make a quilt for DSD’s room but in this course we worked on a cot size quilt to get the hang of things.

Here is a quick snap of my quilt top which is nearly finished. It is meant to be sort of random. (getting that look took some effort though!) The class was great but I’m worried that this was the easy part – assembling the quilt and finishing it seems a bit more daunting.

When I got home from my quilting class, I got another sewing project: making outfits for DSD’s collection of go go hamsters.

Despite this being a fidgity project, I’m actually quite pleased with the results. Fluffy is wearing the trimmed off bit of an Ikea curtain and Stinker and Winky are wearing my old jeans. Yes, Stinker has a collar so he can show off his fauxhawk.

Stay tuned for more on the quilting project!