'Club Penguin' Cushion

Tom, our 8 year old is now the proud new owner of a Club Penguin cushion, which he designed, and I made this afternoon. He drew the design, based on one of the characters from his favourite computer game site, and I copied it exactly, appliqueing on the parts.

The back of the cushion is just some old curtain fabric, made into a simple overlap opening.

Finished 'Happy Houses' quilt top

This morning I'm doing fairly well - finished painting all the woodwork in my bedroom, and finished the quilt top of my Happy Houses quilt - all those little 2'' squares finally in one piece!
They didn't fit together 100% at the corners (a couple of the rows are narrower), but considering I did no measuring at all (except for the 2'' squares in the first place), I am really pleased with how the whole thing has gone together.
If you click on the pictures, you might be able to see the hand sewing round each of the doors and windows, and little buttons for door handles and apples... I had fun! I've got some of the same red fabric for binding the quilt with, but have no idea how I'm going to actually quilt it yet. Any ideas welcome!

A couple of cards

I made this card for my husband's birthday yesterday - the kids helped me choose the words to stamp on for each letter of his name!
Letters is also the theme for the week at Wednesday Stampers Challenge.

And a very quick one made this morning for my son's 5 year old friend.

A few bits...

I finished off the 4 strips of border for my Happy Houses quilt today. They looked lovely in the sunshine.I had a go at a new technique in my quilting class at church a couple of weeks ago, using a bias tape maker, and some narrow iron-on double sided sticky stuff. I ironed the tape onto a sheet of silicone paper, which overlay another sheet of paper with the pattern drawn on. When the whole pattern was ironed into shape, I transfered it onto the backing fabric, and hand-sewed round all the edges. This will be another square for my 'new techniques sample quilt'.How do you know when quilting has become a bit of an obsession? When you ask at the local Leisure Centre if you can cut a couple of pages out of one of their magazines...

(I was helping take my son's class swimming, at the time, and spotted these. The receptionist kindly lent me her scissors!)

And finally, I cleared out a cupboard at the weekend, and found my first ever attempt at quilting (it's hand quilted) - it's from years and years ago. The urge must have always been in my blood... lurking!