Happy Birthday Sara (and a quilt sneak peak)

Last week my beautiful friend Sara turned fabulous 40, and one of my gifts was this cloud and raindrop wall hanging. I based it on one of many similar items floating around on the web and am very happy with the way it turned out. I used a wool blend flannel and some acrylic felt. Happy Birthday beautiful lady - I hope you have a wonderful year!

During the summer holidays I had fun making some other 'just because' gifts for Sara too, including a beautiful Poppy Doll and a doll quilt.

The quilt was inspired by this magnificent creation, and was a test run for a full sized quilt I'll make in the future.

Here's the doll showing her fabulous flannel trousers.

And another view with different outfit, gift bag and paper garland.

And a close up of the garland. The paper circles were cut from an old book using a circle cutter, then 'chain pieced' together in pairs on the sewing machine. You open out the circles, and voila - a beautiful paper garland!

One last close up of the doll quilt - I just love those yummy colours!

The Row by Row quilt is starting to take shape. I cut out many little colourful pieces of fabric. They are lined up in sewing order on my ironing board,

And along the back of my couch.

Then after cutting out 240 little calico squares, is was time to start sewing...

The colours remind of the covers of old Noddy books from when I was a kid. I'm loving this quilt already...