Laura's Special Baby Blanket

When my friend Laura announced she and her husband had a 'special project' on the way there was only one present I could possibly make for her, a baby blanket that celebrated the little one's half Bangladeshi, half American cultural roots...
Ada was born a week early and although I'd had the American flag print cotton, green fleece, red fur and satin put aside I hadn't quite got round to making it. (I was hoping she'd be late so I had more time!) Then all of a sudden she arrived (it was a quick labour!) and the blanket needed making.
This meant I didn't have time to write down instructions or take photos for a blog tutorial...but on the plus side I managed to make it after work between the hours of 10pm-midnight...probably the quickest thing I've ever designed and sewn in my life! 

Baby Ada loving her blanket

 I sandwiched some wadding between a soft fleece backing and the flag cotton and in the centre made a Bangladeshi flag which is basically a red circle on a green rectangle! It was edged with satin because Laura told me when she was a child she had something similar and loved the shiny edging. Ada was adorable, very tiny, calm, relaxed and immediately snuggled into her new blanket.

Aunty Momtaz

She was so lovely and warm with soft silky hair, I wanted to take her home with me! And of course she's a very lucky baby as not only does she own a bespoke blanket, she's also the one who has the customised babygrows from my last blog post! Good to see one so young exposed to home-made crafts!

Update! What I've been doing lately!

The other day I realised I had worked 21 days straight without a day off. So it's not surprising I haven't had much chance to blog recently. In between all this mad working, working and working, I have also managed to make time for some fun stuff too. Here's a pick of the best bits of my life recently.  (Sadly none of them involve sleeping which is the one thing I could do with more than anything right now!)

Laura's Crafty Bay Shower

My friend Laura is 'due' next week and last weekend she held a crafty baby shower around hers. She was donated over 30 plain white babygrows a few months ago and decided she couldn't bare to have such ordinary clothes. So she dyed half of them and then invited lots of friends around to help decorate each one with fabric pens, applique, drawings, paintings, doodles etc. She ended up with a room full of original art work and will have the trendiest baby ever thanks to her fashionable new wardrobe. Mine was a 'Bollywood Star' theme where I foiled on sparkly letters which involved an hour of ironing. You can't quite see it in the picture of me above, but I also enhanced it with colourful stars. 

Fancy pants

As I never managed to complete the pants I started to make in the fancy pants class for my hen do, I returned to finish off and made these fab 'big pants' which double up as  great hotpants. The Japanese fabric has white bears flying in hot air balloons on it.

Chinese New Year

I ran two chinese themed workshops at the Geffrye Musuem, including making these traditional lanterns with chinese writing on - first time I've ever tried writing chinese characters although due to lantern restrictions the text is not vertical as it should be.

Asiana Bridal Show

Back in January I attended the biggest Asian bridal catwalk in the country to report back on the trends for 2011.

Backstage gossip

I went backstage to find out more about how the show is put together and  spotted supermodel Mehreen getting her jewellery fixed in place as well as got a better look at the clothes:

Coraline boots

The only item I bought in this year's sales are these amazing yellow boots. I wish I could wear them everyday but as they are my newest footwear I'm mainly saving them for special occasions.

Southbank Press trip

This week I went along to a Southbank Press trip where we were treated to a flight on the London Eye and best of all one of my lifetime fantasties was fulfilled -  a trip on a DuckBus! This is a road vehicle that miraculously turns into a boat and travels across the River Thames - amazing!

Valentine's day

I sneakily got Matt a present that I actually wanted for myself, some Marmite chocolate! Luckily he wasn't keen on it so I got to enjoy most of the bar! I also baked 35 chocolate brownies for the office with iced heart motifs but my camera was out of battery so I couldn't snap them before they got gobbled up.

 

New pet

Finally on Friday night I got a pet. She is a 6 week old African Pygmy Hedgehog. I will be putting up proper pictures soon, she's mainly sleeping and all I've snapped so far is this picture of her peering out from her travel box (she came home on the train) to catch a glimpse of her new home. 


Next week is going to be mental with magazine deadlines but I look forward to blogging more as soon as I can! 

My wedding in the news!

There's an article about my wedding in today's Guardian and also some photos!

This is me, one of the proudest moments of my life as it's been an ambition of mine to be published in G2 forever and now I can finally tick it off the list!!! Yipeeeeeeee x