Tone Finnanger's Blog, page 12

Christmas Birds

We just had our annual Christmas workshop in the Tilda studio and this year we made lovely Christmas birds.

They are quite easy to make and great for a workshop if you do some preparations.

The body is sewn, and we had pre-sewn bodies for our workshop.

Here is the christmas-bird-pattern

You will need:

Cardboard or a plastic sheet for templates

Pen

Fabric for the body, wings, tail and beak.

Filling for the body

Flower stick for turning

Needle and thread

Thin cardboard for wings, tail and beak

Fast drying craft glue

Small sharp scissors

Purls for eyes

String, thin metal wire or thin ribbon

Make sure you have a needle with a head small enough to go trough the small purls you choose for eyes.

First you need to make cardboard or plastic templates for all the pattern pieces, then iron the body fabric right sides together and trace the body onto the fabric using the body template.

Sew on the line and leave an opening for turning as shown in the pattern.

(Sewing the bodies is all the preparations we did for the workshop in addition to making all the necessary materials available.

We also printed out a pattern for each participant so they could make their own templates for wings, tail and beak.)

Cut around the body shape approximately 4 mm or 0,3In outside the seam and use the flower stick to turn the body.

Fill the body and tack the opening shot.

Glue fabric onto thin cardboard and trace two mirrored wings, a tail and a beak on the back using your templates.

Cut the pieces out with small sharp scissors.

Fold the tail a little on the middle so that it’s easy to glue it onto the bird. Glue the wings onto each side, and fold the beak before you glue that on.

Sew small purls on as eyes.

To hang the birds you can use a thin metal wire, string or thin ribbon.

The birds are cute as decor on the Christmas tree or on your wrapped gifts.

A home for Christmas

We had so much fun building a home for our Tilda friends using what we found around the studio.

The house in it self is an old cupboard and although the ceiling is a bit low it works perfectly.

Quirky is good in our opinion, and everything doesn’t  have to be the perfect size.

This is such a great project to create with kids, and Tilda friends are approved for children all ages.

Why not start looking for the perfect vintage cupboard house and small quirky items. Perhaps your Tilda Friends will have a home for Christmas.

Oh, this would actually be a perfect Christmas calendar project for a lucky child, receiving one small item a day. Why didn’t we think of that before….

The cake is made out of the bottom of a plastic cup, first covered with fabric and then decorated with ribbon buttons and pieces of striped straws as candles.

The doll quilt and tablecloth is sewn using 2,5 in squares.

An old stool is the perfect table, and eggcups perfect doll cups. The kitchen counter is a Tilda fat quarter box turned on the side.

Maybe you can find a tiny Christmas tree outside, use oasis to put it in an old porcelain cup and decorate with purls buttons and ribbon. It’s easy to get a bit carried away, you might need a bigger cupboard or a wardrobe.

Clamshell Cushion

It’s always nice to find ideas on how to use those fabric scraps left over from other projects and Red Brolly’s clamshell cushion is just perfect.

Notice how several leftover pieces are sewn together on some of the clamshells. That way all the smaller scraps can be used for this project, and we think it makes the cushion more interesting.

A really sweet and useful scrap project.

Check out Red Brolly’s sweet Peach Blossom Cushion tutorial.

Butterfly Wings

Awww, how cute! Wife-Made‘s butterfly wings, we should have posted this one before Halloween, but you can always make them for next year, or for any dress up event. So adorable!

Patchwork Hearts

These sweet patchwork hearts are made by Lisa and Sarah at A Spoon Full Of Sugar. They make a very cute Tilda heart of the home mini quilt.

Sewing Kit House

Sedef from Down Grapevine Lane has recreated the Sewing Kit House from the book Tilda’s Toy Box in this seasons new fabric collections Cabbage Rose and Memory Lane. Very pretty!

If you love sweet projects and colorful palettes go and check out her blog!

Quilt inspiration!

Tilda Australia used two of our free quilt patterns to make fresh new quilts with the new autumn fabrics. The retro inspired Spring Diaries Quilt and the Pardon My Garden diamond Quilt.

They really look great in Cabbage Rose and Memory Lane fabrics!

More amazing quilt inspiration with new Tilda fabrics in this collage of details from quilts by: Stitch Between The Bridges, Cole & Taffy, My Georgie Boy and She Quilts A Lot.

Absolutely wonderful!

Floral Clothespins

This seasons new decorative floral clothespins are useful for more than hanging the wash. Here at the studio we use them for hanging cards, fabric and ribbon samples, scraps and what ever inspire us.

They are also useful for Christmas calendar bags, or for hanging dolls by the ears. We love the vintage floral look.

Peach Blossom Moths

Our talented friend Sanch who runs Red Brolly was inspired by Peach Blossom Moths to make a gorgeous quilt and absolutely wonderful fabric Moths.

We love the moths and would like a turquoise wall full of fabric moths in all sizes if we had the free space. 
This is just a wonderful gift for everyone who follows Red Brolly.

And how beautiful is this Peach Blossom Moth Quilt! Sanch combined the two fabric lines Cabbage Rose and Memory Lane beautifully.

Visit Red Brolly to get inspired!

The quilt is one of the projects for The Tilda Showcase organized by our wonderful Australian whole seller Two Green Zebras. Follow the showcase here to see new exiting projects every day.

Lovely thread

The “Sewing By Hand” thread is now available in more beautiful colors. This thread is a visual joy and the quality is just amazing!

Lovely wooden spools cost a little extra but is certainly worth it.

As you can see they where the photographer Sølvi’s favorite and we really love the pictures.

Here are the available colors.

They match our block colored fabric perfectly.