Buttonberry

Creative five minutes....

Well i'm not sure how but i think i may have just found five minutes - it was a blink and you missed it moment but it definately happened and now i have my very own little piece of abstract art...

 

I dipped into the scrap basket and these lovely oranges jumped out at me..

 

 

I didn't think about it just started sewing and layering & now i have a nice little picture - pride of place in the loo!!

Go on girls  - find five minutes you might surprise yourself!

Lisa xx

It's Coming...

 

 

 

Assume positions by the letter box girls - Royal Mail are on their way!

2 Posts in 2 Days – surely not...

...yep, seriously, we are SO back again!  We wanted to let you know 

what has been keeping us busy over in the day to day workings of BBHQ

 

We are about to kick off the much-anticipated and longed for “Tail 

Feathers” by lovely Natalie from Cinderberry Stitches.  As a result we are boxed 

in here at BBHQ behind these.....

 

 

 

It’s no hardship really.  If you signed up for a place, not long now girls!

 

We also caught a fleeting glimpse of THE most divine patterns from Kellie Wulfosohn of “Don’t Look Now”.  It truly was fleeting, these beauties flitted it and out again before we got much chance to coo and cuddle them – you girls know class when you see it!  We have more on the way but for now if you’ve not seen Kellie’s blog, please put it on your to-do list at once.  It will actually make your mouth water.  Honestly.

 

We are also eagerly awaiting Kaleidoscope – the new book from Melly & Me.  It is sure to be scrumptious if the blog about the photoshoot is anything to go by.

 

With all this gorgeousness popping up all over the place you’d think we’d got nothing left in our “coo” reserves.  Not so, we did manage to squeeze a bit of “ooooooooh look” out when we accidentally wandered on to Etsy and unfortunately bought these...

 

 

Yup.  Don’t need to say anything really do I?  If you NEED one of these yourself, pop over and visit the lovely Posh Plushies on Etsy.

 

Oh and if you’re going to have a new pincushion, you probably need new pins to go in it don’t you?  Oh, oh what is this we have here….

 

 

 

Yum yum – go have a little peep at Parallel Botany’s lovely things here.

 

As you can see, we have really indulged ourselves in other people’s creativity lately.  It is a lovely guilty pleasure – well we don’t feel THAT guilty.  These girls deserve the support!  We do intend to crack on with some of our own ideas though – we can’t wait to have stuff to show you but for now, content yourselves with looking at the raw materials......

 

 

Blasts From the Past (That's Us)

Has absence made the heart grow fonder or are you thinking “who are you”?  We wouldn’t blame you if you were leaning more towards the latter there.

 

Sadly, life in the BB camp is not all glamour (or indeed, any glamour!) sometimes it’s hard slog and spreadsheets and frankly, who wants to see pics of that?  (Mr C has got his hand up but he doesn’t count as he’s a geek). 

 

We have looked up from the Excel for a moment though to realise we’ve got stuff to tell you and pics to share. We haven’t actually told you about Malvern yet have we?  Did you go along?  If not you missed this....

 

 

Our little “shop front”

 

 A close up of the gorgeous “Friendship’s Greeting” beautifully made and generously loaned to us by Janet Corbett

 Some gorgeous non-fattening treats

 A nervous-looking Dilbert.  Well wouldn’t you be? We all know that Pippi invites trouble…

Apart from us showing off, you also missed out on some fantastic quilts on display.  Here are just 2  of our favourites for now…

 “Fields of Somerset” This is an altar frontal made for St Peter’s Church in Lydford,

Somerset

by the amazingly talented Caryl Larkins, Marion Topp & Catherine Millar

And oh wow look at this.....

 

This is an absolutely amazing piece of work called “Bat out of Heaven” by Janet Grist.  She says her inspiration was “a bat flower in a garden centre in

Spain

.  It was so gorgeous and glamorous that I thought it ought to have a portrait to show off its curves and textures – so I stitched one!”  Just like that!

We stayed here.....

 

...with the lovely Kim from Worn and Washed.  If you don’t know about Kimmy Kim Kim’s products you neeeeeeeed to know.  They’re gorge.  She trots around the charity shops of this fair land and reclaims lovely bits of cotton.  She washes, irons, carefully cuts and packages and 

you end up with this...

 

 

Ah yes and there is the little matter of the

Liberty

pieces......

 

ahem....4 (count them) bags came home with us.

 

See whilst we had a ball meeting everyone and obviously tempting you all with gorgeous gorgeous things, we got tempted fairly well ourselves.  Here is just a glimpse of what else came home with us!

 

Now then, you try standing next to Euro Japan Links – our neighbours for 2 shows now and the loveliest people – for 4 days and coming away empty handed.  Not going to happen people! They have scrumptious treats such as this....

 

We are mightily addicted to making Mary’s fabulous Bane pattern. Please try it , it’s beautiful!

 The great thing is you can buy the little clips separately and so I made up the Strawberry one from my own fabrics.  Lovely.  I have enough to make 8 more!!

 

Our other neighbour was the very clever, very funny and super lovely Sue Hawkins.  We hadn’t met Sue before, nor had we seen her simply gorgeous wares – look at this please!!!

 

 

We admit, we had never tried canvaswork before but we do like to get involved in all sorts of craftyness (I don’t mean that in a fiddling expenses kind of way) and lo and behold, a new addiction has been born.  Excellent, we were wondering what to do with all that spare 

time...

 

Gosh we have got more news to catch up on in terms of stuff happening over there on our site...more tomorrow soon!

 

 

The Buttonberry award for bravery

Hello hello hello - it's been a while hasn't it?  Well we've not been absolutely and completely non-productive.  Look - we made one of these...

It's a fab "Purselet" from Fig Tree quilts.  It was the last of their patterns we had to try and it's gorgeous.  It's roomy too so it supports our cosmetics habit a treat!  We have treated you to the "hanging on the handle of one of the fabric cupboards" shot because the fabrics are remarkably tidy for us! 

 

Here's a lovely fuzzy close up of that fantastic fabric.  It's not one of ours sadly, it's one from the magical "cave of millions of collected fabrics" that seems to be totally bottomless and yet completely contained in a cupboard here.  We feed it more fabrics as often as possible to keep it topped up of course.  I can't remember where this  one came from but it is Japanese so it might be the divine Superbuzzy. (Careful, it's addictive)

Look, we've got to get on to the topic of this post.  Animal bravery.  Meet Pippi.

Pippi is your perfectly ordinary (blue yes ordinary blue) horse.  Here she is posing quite calmly in a super patch of super unidentified flowers.  Amazing really given that literally moments before this happened...

Now in the circumstances, you'd think she'd bolt and run.  RUN PIPPI RUN...

...but not Pippi.  No she stood her ground.  I couldn't believe it.

I did think that was probably the bravest animal thing I'd seen for a while but then I remembered something. The most amazing act of animal bravery ever in the whole world ever goes to....

 

...this bunny.  Who is alone. In the house. WITH ME!  Mwah ha ha ha ha!

Playing shops....

Well girls we are back from another weekend playing shops and we had an excellent time in Chilford at the Quilt fair. So much so (we are really getting into this playing shops business) that we've decided to get a till!! Ok so that might not sound very exciting but we are easily pleased  - so if any of you know of any good ones please let us know - we'd love something vintage and fanciful but mainly we want it to make the super beep beep noises. The plan will be to invest in one for Malvern as it will make serving all you lovely ladies a lot quicker - at the moment our brains are frazzled and we don't do nearly enough brain training!

We thought you might like to see some pics of our stall and items we had displayed so here goes:

 

We went for a spring time - laundry day look with a washing line & dolly pegs to display the quilts. Magoo didn't want to come down, to be honest those monkeys were nothing but trouble all weekend...

   

These two were always sneaking off for a cuddle in the corner!

 

Close up of our new 'Circus' Quilt Kit -  we loved the colours so much when doing Little bluebirds that a new quilt, come play mat come pinic blanket simply had to be invented!!

Close up of the beautiful Litle Patchwork Village quilt by Rosalie Quinlan, we had so much fun making this up it really was a lovely project to do - even if it was at the 11th hour (aren't they always ;)) 

 

And some posies, we loved these! Such fun to make and so effective!!

 

 

And some Petite Gateaus the kind that you can have loads of without the calories!!!

Some of the items may feature at Malvern but we alway like to think of new things and ways of presenting our stand so who knows what we will come up with in a month or so (you have to love our laid back planning!).... Anyhooo probably sould sign off for now. We'll be back soon hopefully with pics of some of our own projects -  we need to start making things with our Stashes too as cupboard doors are getting to that point where they don't quite close ;)

Lisa xxxx

Forgive us....

For we have sinned..... well ok we haven't been that bad but we have been cheating a little bit - we've discovered another form of blogging, a 'lighter' way to blog if you willand it has turned our heads a little.... if you haven't guessed we're just a little addicted to Twitter! Now don't worry we haven't forgotten you all we've just been incredibly busy visiting suppliers and getting ready for our next show - the Chilford Quilt show on the 13th-15th of March. So if you visit here often and want to know what we are up to why not follow us on Twitter too? It's quick and easy and we update it almost every day with one liners!  You can even see us prattling on if you look over on the right of the blog right now - look there it is!

Anyhooooo back to the main reason why we have been so quiet.... take a sneaky peak at the new items we'll be showing at Chilford....

 

 

 

Tis the Season to be….self-indulgent!!

At least that’s what it feels like around here!  Oh I have shamelessly treating myself to festive “me time” all over the place!  It all started here…

 

That is the ludicrously pretty town of Cochem, on the Moselle in Germany.  I was very fortunate to spend a weekend there with my Mum and Sister and we ate, drank and were very merry!  We even managed to squeeze in a small amount of Christmas shopping too. 

We came home full of festive cheer (Gluwhein will do that to even the Scroogiest type!) and it was straight on with loading up the most over-dressed tree in the world!  Here is my current favourite tree decoration (NB: ‘current favourite’ in this sentence applies for about 3 seconds)

 

Finally, it is time to reveal some of the ongoing, purely for me sewing projects that are cluttering up the place!  I’m not sure what the collective noun is for Pinwheel blocks – any suggestions?  Anyway, here is a pile waiting to be turned into something suitably festive…

 

Here also is a couple of pics of a lovely wool project I’ve been wanting to make for ages and ages.  It is by Indygo Junction and is called “Rustic Winter”.  I’ve made a tiny couple of changes (due to being not very good at drawing and not very good at couch stitch).

 

   

 

That’s it for now.  We’ll do a few more updates of what we’ve been up to soon but Secret Santa and the need for surprises are preventing some pictures for now!  In the meantime, we’d love to hear about your festive projects….

Emma

xxx

Ching ching ching....ching ching ching....

Well of course you’ve all guessed that is the sound of lovely jingly Christmas bells making their way to us here at BBHQ.  Yes that’s right, we’ve been very lucky indeed and received early Christmas gifts from the very lovely Jan Gregory.

 

You know the day is going to be a good one when a parcel (tied with string and everything!) arrives on your doorstep and you open it to find these!!!

 

 

We were already over the moon as there was clearly no sharing required here.  Don’t get me wrong, we do share – in extreme circumstances – but Christmas gifts?? Come on, we’re not perfect!  It’s just as well really because would you want to give up even half of this? 

 

 

No of course you wouldn’t. These wonderful little lavender bags smell beautiful and look even better – even my rubbish photography can’t spoil their loveliness!  So thank you so much Jan, we are really touched that you made us these lovely gifts. 

 

Emma xxx

 

PS:  We have been busy with the needles ourselves – more on that later….

Another play time comes to an end....

Well that's it Chilford '08 is over and our three days of 'playing shop' is finally over, oh to be able to do that everyday! We have such a wonderful time meeting you all and getting out and about it is much more fun than being cooped up in BBHQ! I don't think  we'll even miss eating our sandwiches under the table and drinking black tea when we forgot the milk ;) Aah well we've booked to attend Chilford in March and Malvern in May so we have it all to look forward to again......and we can save up our pennies too as it isn't all work - there's a lot of shopping to be done too!

Here's as much as we could fit in the picture this late at night ;)

 

Anyway enough about our shopping antics here are a few pictures of our stall and little corner of paradise!

 

Want to come in closer and have a good ole nose? Oh ok then..... recognise these cheekys? I heart making bermuda shorts! They are just the cutest!!!!!!

   

Want more? what about these lovely windmills from Rosalie Quinlan's 'Gift' book...

 

Or a closer look at the 'It's a Redwork Christmas' Bom?

 

These mices are the cutest this snapshot is of the Christmas Belles Table runner.....

Or what about some lovely hanging decorations for the Christmas season or your bedpost!!?

We made a few Christmas baubles of our own to decoration our pretty space!

 

& last but by no means least the wonderful 'Over the river' quilt black and cream quilt....

 

We hope those of you who missed it can visit us in March or May, we're sure to have collected even more treats by then! Hopefully this will give you a little taster to keep you going :)

Suppose we should get back to the unpacking!

Lisa xxxx