My one and only handmade Christmas present

I'm cutting it a bit fine admittedly, but I've finally finished my one and only handmade Christmas present. It's a quilt for my younger son Charlie, who's shockingly difficult to buy for. I was beginning to think he'd have nothing but a pile of DVDs to open on Christmas day (which I'm sure he wouldn't complain about!) when I noticed how much he liked snuggling under his brother Louis' quilt. Eureka - I'd make him a quilt of his own! When I made Louis' quilt almost a year ago, he was very involved in choosing fabrics and had a clear idea about how he wanted the quilt to look. In stark contrast, Charlie really didn't give a monkeys, he just wanted something to crawl under. I did manage to get out of him that he wanted it to be blue…with giraffes on it….OK.

The giraffe fabric was in fact the only fabric for the quilt top I ended up buying, I managed to eek the rest of it out of stash fabric which was supremely satisfying. The two solid blues were from my craft fair fabrics stash, the blue polka dot fabric was left over from my Jubilee Dress and the red and white striped fabric was kindly gifted to me by Amy after she won my Banksia top in a giveaway. I like the fact that the giraffe fabric has a pop of yellow on it to give the quilt a bit contrast colour.

This quilt is the same size as Louis' quilt (approx 40" by 60") so quite small, but still large enough to curl up on the sofa underneath. I used a navy cotton sheet as backing and bound it with this lovely striped bias binding from Frumble Fabrics. It didn't actually take that long to make as I knew what I was doing this time (sort of). I used all the same layouts and tutorials as I did last time, except for the actual quilting. I quilted just to the side of the seams rather than diagonally across and this saved a lot of time ruling lines etc.

Making this quilt has made me realise that I'll never be a passionate quilter. I'm just not meticulous enough or patient enough to concentrate on complicated designs and patterns. But I can turn my hand to simple quilting and pull off a reasonable quilt when required, which I'm happy about. I think Charlie will like it anyway, which is the main thing.

Talking of Charlie, I also managed to fashion a new flannel coat for Raggy, which is becoming something of an annual tradition. Last year's effort was beginning to look pretty grim and I was forever stitching up his rips.

Raggy's coat: before….

….and after!

I used exactly the same strategy as last year and Charlie accepted the new coat without a qualm. He's come on so much recently and has passed a couple of developmental milestones that are actually life changing for our family. In short, he's a rock star and we're so, so lucky to have him as our son. Happy Christmas darling Charlie, I hope you enjoy your quilt!

Charlie the rock star

Frumble Fabric Giveaway

Hoorah, hoorah!  It's stopped raining and the sun is out! What more could you want? Well how about a little fabric talk, followed by a fabulous giveaway, courtesy of Frumble Fabrics. Frumble is a relatively new online store (it was set up at the end of 2010) offering a cool, eclectic range of fabrics and some seriously covetable haberdashery lovelies. There's a great range of quilting fabrics, dressmaking favourites such as ginghams and polka dots and a nice selection of corduroys. Here's what's currently floating my boat....

A small section devoted to sewing themed fabrics, including these beauties:

Vintage dress patterns

Oh so elegant vintage ladies - I've already made some gorgeous make-up bags out of this fabric

Super-cool scooter/mod fabric - perfect for man presents

This lovely chevron print that I can really see as a sweet A-line skirt

And that's just the fabric!  In their haberdashery section they have some really useful, time-saving piped bias binding, a selection of handmade bias binding in the prettiest fabrics,

Gingham cherries? Yes please

and my personal, all time favourite: lace edged, polka dot bias binding!!

Words fail me...

I must admit, when I first discovered Frumble, I was intrigued.  It was as if they'd read my mind and decided to stock all the exact little sewing extras I've been dreaming of.  I contacted them, and co-owner Mat (who runs the business with partner Monica) kindly agreed to answer my nosey questions AND offer a very generous giveaway to boot.  Enjoy...

Where does the name Frumble come from?

"When we were trying to decide on a name we sat down for a morning and had a little brainstorm. We wanted a name for our business that wasn’t necessarily related to sewing or fabric but something that was only one word long, simple, easy to remember and quite fun to say. Several gallons of tea later, we came up with Frumble and straight away we felt this was a perfect name, it just felt right. After using the name for a couple of months we actually found that the ‘Fr’ in Frumble was a bit of a problem on the phone and no one quite knew what we were saying, so we ended up with a mini tag line we use on the phone. “Frumble, It’s like crumble only with an F” and we found we always gets a bit of a giggle from the person at the other end of the phone."

What did you both do in your previous lives?

"The Frumble family has a wide range of previous background experiences from product design, civil engineering, fine art, sewing to IT. This broad range of skills makes for an ‘interesting’ mix but we have found that it was more than enough to get us where we are today. We have designed and built the website ourselves, selected all our products and of course, learnt to lovingly package it up to get orders off to the post office in good time. A relatively small family-run team have done this without any external professionals and we hope this organic and nurtured approach is one thing that has helped us to succeed over the last 18 months."

What's your criteria for deciding which fabrics to stock?

"This is a lot simpler than you might expect. We tend to choose fabrics we like. I think the male and female perspectives sometimes make for an unusual selection of fabric. There are just so many fabrics to choose from out there, so narrowing it down is tricky. If we had an unlimited supply of money and an unlimited supply of space, we would have a lot of fabric. We've been keen to try and find fabric from designers that aren’t readily available. This is hard to do, but we think we've achieved it quite well - we've brought in a large selection of fabric from a new US company called Blend Fabrics, along with our ‘geek chic’ inspired fabrics from Timeless Treasures."

Your haberdashery section is awesome and you've really thought about the finishing touches that dressmakers need. How on earth do you choose what to stock?

"We hope that our haberdashery range is fairly unique. We try to offer some of the essentials, but also look for products that are hard to get hold of. We love our new lace edged polka dot bias binding, and have had excellent feedback on it. We also make our own bias binding, which can be fairly time consuming, but we think that it's good to be able to provide something that we've been able to produce ourselves.

Our biggest problem is that we have too many new products to share, we have no end of haberdashery queueing up to be listed online! This includes some beautiful, made in England, 100% cotton lace that we think is absolutely gorgeous."

Where do you see Frumble Fabrics going in the next year?

"We are just about to move into a new business unit, close to the city centre of Birmingham. This should give us a little more space and focus, which we hope will help us develop our brand. We try to offer excellent customer service, as well as little personal touches for our customers.

 

One thing we'd love to continue doing is getting to know our customers.  Over the last 18 months, we've been able to build up friendly relationships with our customers and really discover the kind of things they like. We love this kind of customer interaction and hope there's a lot more of it in the future. By opening up an actual space for Frumble, we hope we can meet a few customers in person too, which should be great."

Thank you Mat and Monica, I can't wait to see the new lace selection!

Frumble have very generously offered a £25 gift voucher to one lucky reader.  To enter the giveaway, take a look at the Frumble website and leave a comment on this post saying which fabric you'd choose if you won.  The giveaway is open internationally and closes at midnight GMT on Friday 4th May.  The winner will be chosen at random.

Good luck everybody!