Buttonberry

Deja Vu, a new winner and spot the difference!

Hello - it's us again and yes we're giving stuff away again - yay!

This time, the lucky recipients will be 3 of our Tail Feathers ladies who have all received a little draw ticket in their parcels.

So if you could all do your own little drumroll, we'll wheel in the mystical Buttonberry bowl of dreams (erm, more a redundant fruit bowl which has never had so much as a sniff of a healthy food item) and draw a winner....

....and the winner issssssss HANG ON THERE A MINUTE WOAH WOAH WOAH THERE COWBOY...what is this we see??  Yes, there is a real "spot the difference "moment here.  If you'd care to cast your eyes over our previous post you will see almost exactly this action shot.  Hmm now something is catching the eye here, what is it what is it - oh yes, it's the enormous great rock on Lisa's significant finger there!  That's right, happy happy news here at BBHQ, gorgeous girlie Lisa Loo Lar is now officially betrothed to her fabulous fella Tim and he, the clever old stick, sealed the deal with that sparkler.  Congratulations to you two xx Hats and tissues at the ready girls, we do love a wedding!

Ok ok, we know you love good news but lets get to the business in hand shall we (it IS sparkly though..) the winner of a £25 Buttonberry shopping spree is the holder of this little ticket....

Now then if you don't hold that ticket, don't worry, because you've 2 more chances to bag yourself a prize - £10 to spend on the website.  If you hold either of these tickets then yay - it's you!

Don't forget, this is the draw for the Tail Feathers girls, if you are a Redworker or a Kitty scroll down a bit as your draw is the last post!  Congratulations to Stephanie who won first prize but come on girlies we still have 2 runners up prizes up for grabs.

Whichever winner you happen to be, congratulations to you - drop us a line using the "email me" link on the top left.  If you've not won this time then we're ever so sorry but maybe next time? 

In the meantime, keep sewing and smiling!

And the winner is...

Good afternoon to everyone - we've been missing in action again haven't we?  Well what a way to make a come back - we're doing a draw!

This particular one is for our gorgeous girls taking part in A Kitten's Tale" or "A Redwork Christmas" blocks of the month only  - if you are a lovely lady on our "Tail Feathers" program then you have a little while longer to wait!

But without further ado, if you are a Kitten or a Redworker then rummage for those pink tickets and eyes down girls. 

Look at our action shot - this is Lisa reaching for the golden (Well, pink) ticket.  We did drumroll sound effects and everything.

And the winner is....

 

Well would you look at that, it's "top of the shop"!If you are currently looking at the twin of this ticket then congratulations, you've just won a little £25 spree on our site!  Get in touch using the "email me" link at the top left of this blog and we'll sort you out with some goodies!

If that's not your ticket then maybe one of these is..

  

...if so then hurrah for you because you have also just won a little prize!  £10 to spend on whatever you like on our site!  Again, get in touch using the "email me" link above and we'll get your goodies sorted.

We have another draw coming up in a couple of weeks for the Tail Feathers girlies but until then, congratulations to our winners, whoever you are - we look forward to hearing from you!

Creative five minutes....

Well i'm not sure how but i think i may have just found five minutes - it was a blink and you missed it moment but it definately happened and now i have my very own little piece of abstract art...

 

I dipped into the scrap basket and these lovely oranges jumped out at me..

 

 

I didn't think about it just started sewing and layering & now i have a nice little picture - pride of place in the loo!!

Go on girls  - find five minutes you might surprise yourself!

Lisa xx

It's Coming...

 

 

 

Assume positions by the letter box girls - Royal Mail are on their way!

2 Posts in 2 Days – surely not...

...yep, seriously, we are SO back again!  We wanted to let you know 

what has been keeping us busy over in the day to day workings of BBHQ

 

We are about to kick off the much-anticipated and longed for “Tail 

Feathers” by lovely Natalie from Cinderberry Stitches.  As a result we are boxed 

in here at BBHQ behind these.....

 

 

 

It’s no hardship really.  If you signed up for a place, not long now girls!

 

We also caught a fleeting glimpse of THE most divine patterns from Kellie Wulfosohn of “Don’t Look Now”.  It truly was fleeting, these beauties flitted it and out again before we got much chance to coo and cuddle them – you girls know class when you see it!  We have more on the way but for now if you’ve not seen Kellie’s blog, please put it on your to-do list at once.  It will actually make your mouth water.  Honestly.

 

We are also eagerly awaiting Kaleidoscope – the new book from Melly & Me.  It is sure to be scrumptious if the blog about the photoshoot is anything to go by.

 

With all this gorgeousness popping up all over the place you’d think we’d got nothing left in our “coo” reserves.  Not so, we did manage to squeeze a bit of “ooooooooh look” out when we accidentally wandered on to Etsy and unfortunately bought these...

 

 

Yup.  Don’t need to say anything really do I?  If you NEED one of these yourself, pop over and visit the lovely Posh Plushies on Etsy.

 

Oh and if you’re going to have a new pincushion, you probably need new pins to go in it don’t you?  Oh, oh what is this we have here….

 

 

 

Yum yum – go have a little peep at Parallel Botany’s lovely things here.

 

As you can see, we have really indulged ourselves in other people’s creativity lately.  It is a lovely guilty pleasure – well we don’t feel THAT guilty.  These girls deserve the support!  We do intend to crack on with some of our own ideas though – we can’t wait to have stuff to show you but for now, content yourselves with looking at the raw materials......

 

 

Blasts From the Past (That's Us)

Has absence made the heart grow fonder or are you thinking “who are you”?  We wouldn’t blame you if you were leaning more towards the latter there.

 

Sadly, life in the BB camp is not all glamour (or indeed, any glamour!) sometimes it’s hard slog and spreadsheets and frankly, who wants to see pics of that?  (Mr C has got his hand up but he doesn’t count as he’s a geek). 

 

We have looked up from the Excel for a moment though to realise we’ve got stuff to tell you and pics to share. We haven’t actually told you about Malvern yet have we?  Did you go along?  If not you missed this....

 

 

Our little “shop front”

 

 A close up of the gorgeous “Friendship’s Greeting” beautifully made and generously loaned to us by Janet Corbett

 Some gorgeous non-fattening treats

 A nervous-looking Dilbert.  Well wouldn’t you be? We all know that Pippi invites trouble…

Apart from us showing off, you also missed out on some fantastic quilts on display.  Here are just 2  of our favourites for now…

 “Fields of Somerset” This is an altar frontal made for St Peter’s Church in Lydford,

Somerset

by the amazingly talented Caryl Larkins, Marion Topp & Catherine Millar

And oh wow look at this.....

 

This is an absolutely amazing piece of work called “Bat out of Heaven” by Janet Grist.  She says her inspiration was “a bat flower in a garden centre in

Spain

.  It was so gorgeous and glamorous that I thought it ought to have a portrait to show off its curves and textures – so I stitched one!”  Just like that!

We stayed here.....

 

...with the lovely Kim from Worn and Washed.  If you don’t know about Kimmy Kim Kim’s products you neeeeeeeed to know.  They’re gorge.  She trots around the charity shops of this fair land and reclaims lovely bits of cotton.  She washes, irons, carefully cuts and packages and 

you end up with this...

 

 

Ah yes and there is the little matter of the

Liberty

pieces......

 

ahem....4 (count them) bags came home with us.

 

See whilst we had a ball meeting everyone and obviously tempting you all with gorgeous gorgeous things, we got tempted fairly well ourselves.  Here is just a glimpse of what else came home with us!

 

Now then, you try standing next to Euro Japan Links – our neighbours for 2 shows now and the loveliest people – for 4 days and coming away empty handed.  Not going to happen people! They have scrumptious treats such as this....

 

We are mightily addicted to making Mary’s fabulous Bane pattern. Please try it , it’s beautiful!

 The great thing is you can buy the little clips separately and so I made up the Strawberry one from my own fabrics.  Lovely.  I have enough to make 8 more!!

 

Our other neighbour was the very clever, very funny and super lovely Sue Hawkins.  We hadn’t met Sue before, nor had we seen her simply gorgeous wares – look at this please!!!

 

 

We admit, we had never tried canvaswork before but we do like to get involved in all sorts of craftyness (I don’t mean that in a fiddling expenses kind of way) and lo and behold, a new addiction has been born.  Excellent, we were wondering what to do with all that spare 

time...

 

Gosh we have got more news to catch up on in terms of stuff happening over there on our site...more tomorrow soon!

 

 

The Buttonberry award for bravery

Hello hello hello - it's been a while hasn't it?  Well we've not been absolutely and completely non-productive.  Look - we made one of these...

It's a fab "Purselet" from Fig Tree quilts.  It was the last of their patterns we had to try and it's gorgeous.  It's roomy too so it supports our cosmetics habit a treat!  We have treated you to the "hanging on the handle of one of the fabric cupboards" shot because the fabrics are remarkably tidy for us! 

 

Here's a lovely fuzzy close up of that fantastic fabric.  It's not one of ours sadly, it's one from the magical "cave of millions of collected fabrics" that seems to be totally bottomless and yet completely contained in a cupboard here.  We feed it more fabrics as often as possible to keep it topped up of course.  I can't remember where this  one came from but it is Japanese so it might be the divine Superbuzzy. (Careful, it's addictive)

Look, we've got to get on to the topic of this post.  Animal bravery.  Meet Pippi.

Pippi is your perfectly ordinary (blue yes ordinary blue) horse.  Here she is posing quite calmly in a super patch of super unidentified flowers.  Amazing really given that literally moments before this happened...

Now in the circumstances, you'd think she'd bolt and run.  RUN PIPPI RUN...

...but not Pippi.  No she stood her ground.  I couldn't believe it.

I did think that was probably the bravest animal thing I'd seen for a while but then I remembered something. The most amazing act of animal bravery ever in the whole world ever goes to....

 

...this bunny.  Who is alone. In the house. WITH ME!  Mwah ha ha ha ha!

Playing shops....

Well girls we are back from another weekend playing shops and we had an excellent time in Chilford at the Quilt fair. So much so (we are really getting into this playing shops business) that we've decided to get a till!! Ok so that might not sound very exciting but we are easily pleased  - so if any of you know of any good ones please let us know - we'd love something vintage and fanciful but mainly we want it to make the super beep beep noises. The plan will be to invest in one for Malvern as it will make serving all you lovely ladies a lot quicker - at the moment our brains are frazzled and we don't do nearly enough brain training!

We thought you might like to see some pics of our stall and items we had displayed so here goes:

 

We went for a spring time - laundry day look with a washing line & dolly pegs to display the quilts. Magoo didn't want to come down, to be honest those monkeys were nothing but trouble all weekend...

   

These two were always sneaking off for a cuddle in the corner!

 

Close up of our new 'Circus' Quilt Kit -  we loved the colours so much when doing Little bluebirds that a new quilt, come play mat come pinic blanket simply had to be invented!!

Close up of the beautiful Litle Patchwork Village quilt by Rosalie Quinlan, we had so much fun making this up it really was a lovely project to do - even if it was at the 11th hour (aren't they always ;)) 

 

And some posies, we loved these! Such fun to make and so effective!!

 

 

And some Petite Gateaus the kind that you can have loads of without the calories!!!

Some of the items may feature at Malvern but we alway like to think of new things and ways of presenting our stand so who knows what we will come up with in a month or so (you have to love our laid back planning!).... Anyhooo probably sould sign off for now. We'll be back soon hopefully with pics of some of our own projects -  we need to start making things with our Stashes too as cupboard doors are getting to that point where they don't quite close ;)

Lisa xxxx

Forgive us....

For we have sinned..... well ok we haven't been that bad but we have been cheating a little bit - we've discovered another form of blogging, a 'lighter' way to blog if you willand it has turned our heads a little.... if you haven't guessed we're just a little addicted to Twitter! Now don't worry we haven't forgotten you all we've just been incredibly busy visiting suppliers and getting ready for our next show - the Chilford Quilt show on the 13th-15th of March. So if you visit here often and want to know what we are up to why not follow us on Twitter too? It's quick and easy and we update it almost every day with one liners!  You can even see us prattling on if you look over on the right of the blog right now - look there it is!

Anyhooooo back to the main reason why we have been so quiet.... take a sneaky peak at the new items we'll be showing at Chilford....

 

 

 

Tis the Season to be….self-indulgent!!

At least that’s what it feels like around here!  Oh I have shamelessly treating myself to festive “me time” all over the place!  It all started here…

 

That is the ludicrously pretty town of Cochem, on the Moselle in Germany.  I was very fortunate to spend a weekend there with my Mum and Sister and we ate, drank and were very merry!  We even managed to squeeze in a small amount of Christmas shopping too. 

We came home full of festive cheer (Gluwhein will do that to even the Scroogiest type!) and it was straight on with loading up the most over-dressed tree in the world!  Here is my current favourite tree decoration (NB: ‘current favourite’ in this sentence applies for about 3 seconds)

 

Finally, it is time to reveal some of the ongoing, purely for me sewing projects that are cluttering up the place!  I’m not sure what the collective noun is for Pinwheel blocks – any suggestions?  Anyway, here is a pile waiting to be turned into something suitably festive…

 

Here also is a couple of pics of a lovely wool project I’ve been wanting to make for ages and ages.  It is by Indygo Junction and is called “Rustic Winter”.  I’ve made a tiny couple of changes (due to being not very good at drawing and not very good at couch stitch).

 

   

 

That’s it for now.  We’ll do a few more updates of what we’ve been up to soon but Secret Santa and the need for surprises are preventing some pictures for now!  In the meantime, we’d love to hear about your festive projects….

Emma

xxx