Down Grapevine Lane

New Fabric Collection: 'Fleur'

I'm so thrilled to introduce my newest fabric collection for Riley Blake Designs - Fleur, shipping August 2020.

Fleur is the next chapter in my fabric design story which remains forever inspired by flowers and the beauty of nature. I'm very blessed to live on a picturesque farm in wine country - surrounded all around by vineyards where we keep chickens and grow fruit trees. The peaceful rural setting and my own orchard and flower gardens continue to provide me with endless inspiration for my dainty floral designs. Fleur is a bright and cheerful collection with bold, vibrant colors spanning the whole spectrum of the rainbow - a versatile modern collection suited well for quilting, garments, home decor, totes and bags, and all manners of small sewing projects.

At the time of writing this post I'm still waiting for sample yardage of Fleur, which should be here any day now - unfortunately the package was delayed due to COVID19. So I've put together some examples using the wonders of digital technology to give you a feel for how the fabrics would look incorporated into sewing projects.

There are three quilt patterns that accompany this collection - 'Alice's Garden' and 'Fleurette' are traditional machine pieced designs, with 'Lilac Posy' including a combination of traditional machine piecing and appliqué techniques. Paper patterns for all three quilts can be ordered directly from Riley Blake Designs or from my pattern distributors Creative Abundance.

Thank you for popping in to see my new fabric line today and I hope you are as excited about it as I am! Look out for it in shops in August (September in Australia). If you are a shop owner who will be carrying Fleur please do drop me a line at sedef@downgrapevinelane.com so I can thank you and also add you to my list of stockists. Have a lovely day dear friends!

'Handy Dandy' Pouch Tutorial | Fabric Stamps

Last week I realised I badly needed a small pouch for my crochet hooks, as I keep leaving them all over the place, and often have to fish around for them at the bottom of my crochet project bag. Does anyone else ever have that problem? The first pouch I made turned out so cute I made another one, this one for my spectacles (which I also keep losing). And I thought you may want to have the pattern to make your own so I'm sharing the tutorial on the Sew Can She blog today. This is a great website for free patterns and tutorials - a treasure trove in fact. You may want to bookmark it!

These skinny pouches finish at approximately 3” x 9” – they are the perfect size for not only hooks and spectacles but also you can use them for pencils, toothbrush/paste, or even make up brushes. They are so handy and pretty – which is the essence of ‘Zakka’, a Japanese design aesthetic that combines usefulness with beauty. A lot of my designs feature Zakka elements – I love the style!

You can find the tutorial here. Please tag me on Facebook or Instagram if you make them as I would love to see how yours turned out! In keeping with the Zakka theme I also made two stamps from the fabric scraps from this project (the pink one) as it was just too sweet to put in the bin. And once I made two I couldn't stop and I had to dive into my tiny scrap bucket to make more - they are totally addictive.

I had a few people ask me how I made them so here's a super quick tutorial for you! I first backed both the colourful scrap fabric and a larger white piece of fabric with fusible web. I use Heat'n Bond Lite brand but you can also use other brands such as Vliesofix, Wonder Under etc. I then neatly trimmed the colourful scrap with a rotary cutter, peeled the backing paper and ironed it onto the white fabric. I then trimmed all around the perimeter with pinking scissors, leaving the paper backing behind the white fabric on. When it's time to use them in projects you can peel off the backing and fuse it onto your project then. A cute way to add decorations to projects, or you can even make a mini quilt made entirely of stamps. Enjoy!

Cat Plushies

My son Alex has a best friend called Tom who's just as much nuts about cats as he is, and it was Tom's 10th birthday last week. Alex asked me to make matching cat plushies for both of them. I love that they're still little enough that this is not 'uncool' (yet!).

The white spotty one is Tom's plushie (Alex chose the colours) and the pink is the matching one I made for Alice - of course she had to have one too. Hers is a girl so has eye lashes. I also made a light blue one for my son later that night but it was too dark by then to photograph.

You can get the kitty and fish patterns from Minki Kim's shop.

I've also finally added more sewing machine bookmarks to the shop - in all four colours! These keep selling out every time I restock and it took forever since the last restock to get supplies in to make more, with all the COVID 19 mail delays. Sorry for anyone who's had a long wait!

Till the next post dear friends, stay safe and keep sewing!

Chicks in Space

The other day I was tidying up my sewing room, and I temporarily put some black pin dot fabric on top of my Sweet Prairie bolts whilst moving some fabrics around. Then I noticed how lovely the black looked against the vibrant colours of that collection, and an idea was born.

You may have noticed that I never, ever, EVER sew with black or even dark backgrounds. I've always been a white background girl, and only very occasionally venture out into other pastels such as ivory or powder pink... So this was definitely pushing myself out of my comfort zone!

The pattern is my Backyard Chicks mini quilt. I keep looking at it, and I like how modern it looks, and how the colours seem to pop against the black, but I don't know if I 'love' it... What I keep thinking is that the poor little chicks seem to be floating in space, rather than having a peaceful graze in the backyard :D What do you think though? I would love to hear your opinions.

The Backyard Chicks Mini Pattern is my 'Pattern of the Day' in the shop today and is 25% off. This pattern is also available as a full size quilt. I've also put a bundle of 17 fat quarters from my Sweet Prairie collection in the shop - this fabric is several years old now and hard to find so don't miss it. I have very little left of it now, and have already run out of 4 prints.

In the evenings I'm continuing to make progress with my cross-stitch 'Storytime Sampler' - all 12 story frames are now complete and I've started filling in the blank squares in the backgrounds of the earlier frames. I feel like a rebel deviating from the pattern, but I think it looks better this way. I'll show you the whole thing next time hopefully.

Until next time dear friends (and I'm so proud to be blogging regularly again! I've missed hanging out here!) Stay safe and happy sewing,

Spool Key Fobs Tutorial

I'm back as a regular guest blogger on fellow Riley Blake fabric designer Amy Smart's blog Diary of A Quilter, where I'm sharing a tutorial to make these rather special spool shaped key fobs!