maggie's farm

I don't know if you remember that I was embroidering some animals?  If not, then you should be paying attention, there will be a test! 

Want to see what happened to them?

I sewed them up and stuffed them to make little softies!  The rooster is about 4" high if that gives you an idea of size.  I tried to do a variety of embroidery stitches for a bit of interest and texture for little hands.  I used a FQ I had for the back.

I won the pattern for this little farm from Charlotte Lyons as part of the Handcrafted Holiday Stitch Along.  I couldn't remember the name of that -along so went through my old posts (it's this one), I have 19 posts with the tag "giveaway wins" and most of them have more than one win on them - I'm incredibly lucky!

When I went over to get the link for Charlotte's Etsy shop, I saw she has loads of new patterns, if you like to embroider, go and have a look.

The last piece was this little barn.  Now, this pattern is called "Maggie's Farm" and is for little girls, but I think imaginative play is important for little boys too so this is Jacob's farm (yep, it was a first birthday present for my beautiful nephew) and the two little figures are both boys.

I had a tough time choosing fabric for the lining - not helped by the fact I was sewing this in my pajamas at 10:30 on Saturday morning when we were supposed to be setting off at 12!  I didn't want to use any blue as I'm saving it for the Skill Builder quilt, so I chose this homespun fat quarter which is not pink though it does look like it in this photo!  It's actually purple.

Here's the farm scene.  Figures are not to scale, though my bunny Tiff might get bigger than me if she keeps eating the way she does...  I had a bit of an "incident" when I came to sew the bag up.  Yep, the roof/flap and strap were inside, between the outer and the lining.  That's what happens when you half follow the instructions and half do your own thing without engaging your brain.

The animals can all be stuffed into the farm.

And Jacob can carry it round by the strap.  Or rather, and what actually happened, is Jacob will take all the animals out, wait for you to put them back in, then take them out again!