Foxy fabric

Ooh just got home to discover a lovely little fabric parcel awaiting me! Look how beautiful these designs are!

Living in Brighton I am very lucky to have such a fantastic range of fabric shops at my disposal but these beauties are actually off the interwebs from the fabulous M is for Make. I beg of you, go check it out right now. Based in Brighton, this fantastic little site has some absolutely fabulous designs and what I really love is that you can buy them in fat quarters. The postage is incredibly reasonable too, so go! Buy buy buy! My favourite is definitely the foxes. It's so cute. Now I just need to find the perfect project for it and I might have just the ticket!

Baby gifts and unexpected surprises

My lovely friends Simey and Claire are expecting a baby any day now (Claire's already about 5 days overdue so really is about to pop!) and I wanted to get little baby Clarke a gift that meant something, so decided to make a baby mobile. I kept it simple but I think it's really rather adorable. I've been informed by another friend Thom that Claire isn't a fan of a plastic one she currently has, so hopefully she won't hate this one too! Even if she does, it was a good experiment and I enjoyed making it!

 

 I cannot wait to meet the little man. Luckily I'm up in Gloucestershire next weekend, so hopefully he'll have arrived by then and the Clarke family will be ready for visitors! 

In other crafty news, I was recently sent this gorgeous necklace by the fabulous Georgia Coote. 

 

What's brilliant about this gift, was that it was a swap through twitter! Georgia and I were tweeting back and forth about liking each others blogs (seriously check hers out, she is one heck of a talented lady!) and decided to do a swap of our handmade button necklaces! Such an inspired idea. I absolutely love this design, and it was interesting to see how she'd made it too! 

It was also my birthday last week and Tom and I went away to Devon. Even though the weather was wet we had a fab time on the beautiful North Devon coast and walking in the countryside. You can check out my photos on my Flickr. 

On my return I met up with Katie who gave me my birthday present which I knew was handmade. I have to admit I was very excited (knowing how creative the girl is) but also scared as she'd obviously put so much work into it. My present however, was AMAZING! She'd done me the most fantastic cross stitch in skully font! Brilliant. I absolutely love it; I just have to find somewhere to hang it now!

 

Skull Cushion

I've been pretty busy lately, which sadly means not enough time for sewing! There's been lots going on in the world of Fran. I've decided it's time for a change, and have given my notice in at work. I've been there 5 years, and they are such a fantastic company but it's time for me to move on. So I'm busy figuring out my next move! I've also got involved with fundraising for the Samaritans, which so far has been great. Such fantastic people, and it's nice to know that my marketing skills can be put to good use! I'll let you know how I get on!

Anyway, I finally got around to making my friend Nats a cushion cover. Not quite an Octopus as promised, but I love this cute little skull design! As I chose to do it in leopard print fabric (Nats is a big fan of the leopard print) I wanted to keep the design simple, so the only embellishment if you like is the heart shaped eye sockets.

 

I've been doing a fair bit of knitting lately for the yarnbombing in August. Will post some more pictures soon. I'm currently on 8 squares. If you'd like to sponsor me you can do so here. It's actually inspired me to get back into knitting, and I've found some really fabulous patterns I want to work on. I think I'll save those for the winter months! My friend Alice is such an incredible knitter, as is Tom's sister Dani. She does primarily baby clothes, but they are so amazing!

So, onto a new project! I've got a couple of friends expecting babies this year/next year so I'm going to get started on gifts for them! I've got some very cute ideas, I just have to resist going out and buying more fabric for this project!!