Fabric Inspiration

I've just finished my first quilt top!!!! What can I say? I was so inspired by all the lovely fabric I'd ordered for my nephew's quilt I just had to get stuck into it, one long weekend later and aside from the border, I'd pretty much finished! The design is closely based on the Sparks Baby Quilt tutorial over at Handmade by Alissa. Owen loves animals (tigers are his favourite) so each square features a different animal or bug. I really loved making this and can't wait to start quilting. That won't be for a while yet, first I need to buy batting and more backing fabric (yup, greatly underestimated the amount of fabric I'd need) and besides which, I want to practice my free motion skills before I take the plunge. By the way, thanks for your tip Jacquie, I tried the post-it note trick and it worked a treat! I can't say my seams are 100% straight, but they're certainly much less crooked!

Don't you just love it when you stumble upon a little trove of haberdashery goodness? Finding a fabric store near where I live is pretty tough and I do most of my shopping online. Stopping by Dunelm Mill for bedsheets I almost had a fit, tons and TONS of ribbon, bias tape, ric rac, buttons etc... Here's some that I bought, I love the buttons! They're just like the sort my Mum used to sew on my cardigans when I was little. These have ducks and a tennis playing bunny on them! (How sweet is that?) I also got new pinking shears and pearl headed pins - I'm sure it's not right to love pins so much lol! Can you see the stork shaped embroidery scissors? I saw them featured last week over at The Purl Bee, so I just had to get them, what's even better is they're as practical as they are pretty!

(Sorry for the crappy pictures BTW, it seems whenever I want to take photos at the moment the light is terrible.)