She's Here!!!!! Introducing....

DOLORES!!!!! (AKA Lola.) This is what I was busy trying to push out of me last week: the sweetest little baby ever! I cannot tell you how much Pat and I adore our new daughter. There really aren't sufficient words to describe how precious she is to us.

You'll be seeing much more of my little muse in the future but I'll just share these three pics from her first few days of life for now. 

Oh, and I'll leave you with this awesome song that, for obvious reasons, I can't stop singing!

Refashion Friday Inspiration: Shirt Detail T-shirt Top

Today's Refashion Friday post is about a garment that, in a similar vein to the frill hem denim shirt remake, has a few different elements going. But maybe a feature or two might provide some inspiration even if the whole thing doesn't work for you! 

So what IS going on here? Well the base of this top is an unwanted grey marl dude's T-shirt that had the sleeves removed and the hem chopped off. An equally neglected men's button-up shirt was then ransacked for pieces to apply to the T-shirt/tank basis. The button stand was cut away and top-stitched down the front. Sections of the sleeves were harvested to make new slightly puffy sleeves (with cuff bands made from the hem part of the original T-shirt).  

The new top also features a waist band/tie made from harvested shirt fabric. Overall, this top is fairly cropped and quite boxy. Personally I think my favourite element is the applied button stand: such a simple feature that could add an unexpected design element to a variety of makes. 

Theo's Baby Quilt!

First there was Surayya's. Then there was Samuel's. Now comes the hat-trick! You remember my mate Anna for whom I made a couple of maternity garments recently? Well she had her little baby!!!! A little boy called Theo who, if the photo on Facebook is to believed, is CUTE! Sadly, Theo and his folks live in Madrid so it's going to be a while until I get to meet that little chap in the flesh, by which point I'll have my own new little person for Theo to hang with.

I actually finished this quilt back in May to take with me when we went to Madrid to visit. Anna and her husband Marcus chose not to find out the gender of their baby before the birth, so I had to make it gender-neutral. I also wanted to give this one a fairly fun, contemporary look so I kept that in mind when hunting out fabric scraps to make it from.

Technique-wise, it's made in more or less EXACTLY the same way as the previous two. If it ain't broke... It's backed with red fleece which, along with the wadding, were the only bits that I needed to actually buy. The patchwork fabric pieces came from a combination of my own fabric stash and the scraps hamper at Sew Over It. I think the only thing I did differently with the construction of this quilt is that I hand-stitched the second edge of the binding rather than using my sewing machine as I did with the previous two. This red bias binding is narrower than the other two's self-made binding so I decided it would be less of a headache to stitch it down by hand. I'm actually really pleased with how neat I was able to stitch it.

So, you may be wondering, is there a fourth quilt in the pipeline....?!