Saffron's Blog

Winner of Silver Nutmeg & a Golden Pear Designs

Congratulations to Jane Green who is the lucky winner of the Silver Nutmeg & a Golden Pear Designs. Jane we will send you an email shortly.

Thanks to everyone who entered. Unfortunately there can only be one winner.

Please pop over to visit Silver Nutmeg & a Golden Pear Designs. 

If you are in Tasmania please pop by to see them at the Salamanca markets in Hobart.

Courtney is happy to take custom orders.

The ABCD Soirée - goodness all round

The ABCD soiree is hosted by the wonderful Steph and Lisa.

They arrived early to decorate the venue for the seasonal ABCD meetup.

How do I round up three hours of catch up into a brief blog post? Well, we ate cake and chatted, caught up on our lives and shared stories. It went by in a flash and memories linger.

This cake was incredible!  Alison Lawson Cakes, to be remembered.

The room looked like this:

The tables looked like that:

Our pictures were snapped by Anni From Milk and Honey.

The goodie bags for 28 people was full of food and handmade goodness. Everyone who came made 27 for each of the bags. I thought I should share a few.

Grrl + Dog please have a look at her work.

Free Range Living an emporium of beautifully handcrafted Australian hand made and eco friendly gifts, fashion and home wares. Love my clip. 

Such a wonderful illustration by the talented Andrea Smith.

You can find Steph at MooBear Designs and OverIt. Such an inspiration. Love my bracelet, made by upcycling her Nana’s vintage buttons.

Down That Little Lane. Yum.

So much to share. More food, more kindness and love. Thanks to all who I chatted with and shared goodness.

More details to be found on Bondville.

This is the ABCD Facebook link. 

Friday Finds: Silver Nutmeg & a Golden Pear Designs offers a generous giveaway

Today I was chatting to Courtney Turner who is the creator of Silver Nutmeg & a Golden Pear Designs from Tasmania. Silver Nutmeg is a cottage business selling vintage inspired accessories, home wares, and children’s clothing and toys.

Courtney lives in Tassie and grew up in the Huon Valley (Southern Tasmania) helping out on the family farm growing and harvesting seasonal vegetables and produce. Courtney’s mother taught her and her two sisters to sew from an early age, she still remembers with glee the pride she felt when she completed her first quilt (even though it was very croocked and nowhere near perfect). She says with a laugh!

She continues on with this tradition by encouraging her 3 busy children to sew and create. Her daughter Indy entered one of her quilts into the Craft Fair last year. And Martin her husband can often be seen running their stall at the amazing Salamanca markets in Hobart, which often brings a laugh from customers seeing a large man with tattoos selling children’s clothing.

Courtney says “I simply adore the freedom of making and creating and have a freestyle mindset with this process, apparently my polish grandmother worked with this same independent style.  My Grandmother on mum’s side of the family immigrated from Europe when she was young to escape the war. They were booked to leave on a ship to the USA but my mother was unwell so they missed that boat and caught the next one heading to Australia instead”.

“I believe the ability to be able to make something with your hands and use your imagination to create is an important skill to have and one I have taught my own children”. Hear hear.

You can find Courtney most weekends at the Salamanca Markets or online at her blog. She is currently developing an online store, in the mean time she is happy to take custom orders, so contact Courtney here.

Give Away

Courtney is kindly offering a generous give away of a unique Silver Nutmeg Designs little lady dress in Owls Nesting fabric – (in your particular size).  With a cute pair of complementing hair accessories. To enter pop over and like her facebook page and leave your details in at http://saffroncraig.com/_blog/Saffrons_Blog

The Winner will be chosen on the of 20th of April and contacted via email. Good luck oh and let your friends know please.

Visit the blog Silver Nutmeg and a Golden Pear Designs.

Like her Facebook page here.

A bright and bold quilt for a beautiful baby girl

This is the baby quilt I made for my dear friend Rani and Lincoln’s daughter Matinka. Matinka was born two weeks ago and this week I enjoyed a special afternoon holding her.

I gave her the quilt, which was enjoyed very much by her older sister who smoothed it out and sat on it playing cards.

Rani and I lived together while we studied for our degrees at RMIT in Melbourne. Rani’s room was always bright and colourful. Her walls were completely decorated with prints and patterns, there was no white wall visible—it’s all about bold colours for Rani. With this in mind I designed Matinka’s quilt. It’s a a fully patterned quilt with a modern feel, using pink tones for the baby girl yet it’s bright enough for her mum.

I mixed a few fabrics I bought from Patchwork on Pittwater with my Magical Lands. I just love how the yellow and pink spot goes with the range.

Trimming the quilt and arranging the blocks

Finally, I hand stitched the quilt with the Tutti-fruity thread in variegated colours. To make the stitching pop I decided to stitch in parallel lines half a centimetre from the seams of each block in contrasting thread. Lovely and mediative stitching. Oooommmm.

Congrats to the happy family. After showing friends this quilt I have been asked to make a few commission quilts like it, which is great. Once I finish these I will post them here.

How I labeled Matinka’s quilt

I have seen various creative ways to label quilts. One I loved was upcycling old doilies, which are embroidered with the time and date of the finished quilt. I also like the personalised printed labels that are printed or woven and often say “made by with love.” Antique lace re-purposed as a label gives a vintage feel. Some sewing machines can sew words which also is fun.

I am still to find my label style so to speak, my nature is to keep experimenting. This one uses selvages from the quilt with a handwritten name and date. Next time I might try to print the name in a different manner as my handwriting is very ordinary.

I have hidden a few pieces of fabric behind the label so that if the quilt is damaged it can be used for repairs. That’s not my idea but comes from Nancy Finkle Hughson from Waterford, Michigan who chats via facebook. Good Idea, huh?

I am still obsessed with Kvothe’s legend. I visited the fae realm last night with him as I am well and truly into the second book The Fear. What a writer is Patrick Rothfuss, he has me awake very late.

Do you label your quilt?

Sunday sounds — Sam Amidon

I was thrilled with the performance of Beth Orton at the Sydney Festival on Tuesday. Honestly she was funny, charming and so breathtaking, what a voice and songwriter. She was joined on stage for a few songs by Sam Amidon and what a talent. He is playing tonight at the Spiegletent, then goes to Perth. 

All week I have been listening to his album, I see the sign. It’s only $8 through his website. The album features the amazing Beth Orton on a few songs. Summertime folksy guitar music, seabreaze and salty skin from surfing is certainly very me at the moment.

I also wanted to share a tune from Beth off her website. Beth played some new songs at the gig and did mention she has just finished recording a new album, I can’t wait for that to be released, as the songs were fab.

What music has made your summer playlist so far?

(Source: youtube.com)

Dandelion Kisses makes a sweet girl’s dress

When I was designing the Dandelion Kisses fabric I had the feeling of girls and summer in mind.

Lovely Rachel of Four Wise Monkeys shared with me her latest sewing success on her blog. I thought you might enjoy it as well. Pop over and read about how she made it. 

This also got me to thinking about similarities and that we too have a guinea pig who looks so very similar and don’t say they all do.. Cause they don’t! :)

Our George is now really the size of a small dog. I haven’t shown him since he was six weeks old and he is now a much loved pet. 

Even if my daughter’s attention span for him is only for 5 minutes a day at present…Though today it was ten minutes as he’d lost a tooth. “Look mummy, George is the same age as me, he’s losing his teeth!”. Thankfully they grow back in case you’re wondering…

Big thanks to Rachel for sharing, a $20 gift voucher is on its way for taking such lovely photos and writing in.

I’d love to hear about and see your creations.

Second quilt I made with Magical Lands red

Here is the second quilt I have made with Magical Lands in red. It is a half square quilt. I am a tad obsessed with triangles at the moment.

The thing with half square triangles is that there really is an infinite way to put them together into a quilt, don’t you think?

I played for hours shuffling the squares around on my design wall until I decided I better start sewing the rows together or I would go slowly mad.I kept the darker fabrics to the outer diagonals and the softer tones to the centre.

The Magical Lands in red are so delicate in this quilt compared to the last quilt I made. It’s nice to see how it comes together. It’s sure to make me a better designer.

This is the first quilt I made which is a lot bolder than the half squares quilt.

 What do you prefer, squares or triangles? (sounds a bit like a question from Sesame Street…)