My younger son is in reception and is learning about shapes at the moment. So when we came home from school I wanted to create an activity relating to this particular topic.

Here is what we’ve done, you will need: a pack of midget gems (value ones are just perfect), cocktail sticks and that’s all!

All you need to do is put them together to make a cube, pyramid, cuboids… we had great fun making them and talked about the number of corners, faces, angles…. hope you’ll enjoy trying this at home! Here are a few pics:

When I had a clearance in my husband’s wardrobe i found myself with a huge pile of unwanted T-shirts… I gave most of them to a charity shop, I threw away the really bad looking ones and kept 4 or 5 good looking ones as I had a little project in mind. My little kiddies needed some lap blanket to sit on the sofa while watching TV.

I cut out some big squares from my hubby’s Tees and sew them together. I asked my sons what they would like on their blanket and some of their requests were expected and others a bit funny (an apple….). I looked into my kiddies cupboard and got some Tees that were too small/ dirty/ ugly… Draw the desired shapes on some bonder web and ironed it on their Tees, cut out the shapes and ironed again on the big squares. I had some towel fabrics from a project I never got round to do, so I used that for the backing. Sew them right sides together leaving a 5″ space, turned it over and stitched it closed. Et voila, a nice and quick recycled project! Send me pics of your recycled projects if you want to.

So, after a long day of scrubbing the house down (yeah me!), I got a reward: I received “It’s a boy thing” fat quarter bundle by Michael Miller through the post!! I just love it! I have 14 FQ so my sewing machine is gonna burn!

My eldest son asked me for a quilt to go on his bed about two weeks ago, so we looked on the net for some super cool fabrics and boy did we find plenty! But I had to breathe and calm myself down since when it comes to fabrics I get overexcited.Finally, our hearts set on this fab collection. There’s no question about it, my son’s favorite design is:

All we need to do is find a cool design (after all my son’s a proper Dude!) and I can get cracking. I think I’ll make up a couple of pillows to go with it. Any ideas anyone?

Teacher’s  Xmas presents:

I know it’s a tad early to talk about Xmas but if you’re making hand crafted gifts then you need to start early! I’ve already made my mum a lap quilt and a table runner, and my grandma a table runner. I’ve also stitched a few stockings for family in France. Now I’d like to make my son’s teacher a little something just to say thanks for their hard work. I am going to use some left over fabrics to make them a mug rug. I’m not sure what their favourite colour are but my eldest assured me I could put a bit of pink in them… so here we go!

For the first mug rug, I had a few 1”1/4 strips left from a previous quilt so I’m going to sew the strips together and make lots of tiny rectangles.

Start by sewing 2 strips together.

Press the seam to one side

 Cut your strip depending on how long you want your rectangles to be. I cut lots of 2” squares.

Repeat for all of your strips.

Now, place all your cuts on your table to decide how you’re going to piece them together. Start from the top and call it row 1, row 2. Row 3 etc….

Sew your rectangles row by row so you end up with bands

Sew band by band together until you have a big enough rectangle to welcome a cuppa and a couple of custard creams!

Now you need to sandwich your back fabric, your batting and your top together. Lay your back fabric. On top of it, lay your batting, and lay your lovely sewing on top of all that. Make sure that the back fabric is larger than the batting, and that the batting is larger than the patchwork so that when you quilt it together you will have enough batting and fabric (made that mistake when I started and it was pretty frustrating).

I will be using free motion quilting, I’m teaching myself and I’m no pro, so here is a tutorial of free motion quilting that I found useful. But you can use straight line or even hand quilt (love it!!)

All you need to do is bind it together… Et voila! A little mug rug for a teacher!

For the second one I will be using left over fabrics from those quilts and so I have enough fabrics to make tiny half square triangles.

You will need 10 2-inch squares from white fabric and 10 2-inch squares from your colour fabrics. Enough baking fabric and batting

On your white squares, trace a line diagonally.

Lay one white square and one colour square right sides together.

Sew a quarter of an inch away from your drawn line.

Repeat on the other side of your drawn line.

Cut on your drawn line.

Press seam open.

Repeat on all your squares. I sew chained mine to gain time and thread.

So now you can decide how to arrange them. I made 4 rows, sew the squares together from row 1 then row 2 etc…

Then sew your squares together, then your strips and press.

I added a little border.

press (again!) and you’re done! All you need to do is sandwich your top with backing and batting, quilt it and bind it.

I hope my sons’ teacher will enjoy their little mug rug!