Yummy colours

I'm still busily making items to sell at the village fair (in aid of the church roof fund). I haven't done any freestyle machine embroidery for quite a while so last week I had great fun creating these flowers and hearts to make into brooches. I want to decorate them with buttons so have scattered a mixture of sizes and colours over them to make the button choice easier . . . hmm! I think this could take quite a while.

As you can see, my sewing machine has been working overtime recently. After making the flowers and hearts I machine embroidered some little dollies onto white linen. Each little girl then became a panel in the centre of a tote bag.  

Over the past few days my machine stitching has been interrupted by the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. The UK is currently awash with red, white and blue and I couldn't resist making these patriotic little mice. They are only 15cm (6in) tall and just fit inside this tiny basket. The arms and legs contain pipe cleaners (chenille stems) so positioning the little rascals is quite easy, and fun! The pattern for the mice can be found here. I altered the clothes slightly when making them and gave the girl a fabric dress rather than a knitted one.

The Diamond Jubilee celebrations are over but the many flags will remain in readiness for the Olympics in July. I'm happy to escape to the sewing room where red, white and blue is cast aside in favour of vibrant shades of every hue. As always there's no shortage of helpers!

I love working with yummy colours don't you?