Three Kitchen Fairies

Amanda's knitting Bag.

One of the aspects I like the most about the craft community, is to be an active observer of the creative process. A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to help Christina, The Sometimes Crafter, test her new Amanda's Knitting Bag Pattern. I made this bag in a printed medium weight canvas. The lining fabric is a cotton-linen mix. 

You wouldn't believe how easy this pattern is to follow. The zipper part intimidated me at first, but the instruction and diagrams are super clear, and easy to follow. I'd say that previous experience making bags and purses is not absolutely necessary. You can read more about this beautiful project here.

This pattern is available at The Sometimes Crafter store. You also have a chance to win this pattern at my blogaversary giveaway, as Christina is one of my generous sponsors. 

 

 

3KF third blog-a-versary, and an amazing giveaway!!

 

Hello!! I'm finally here ready to start celebrating with all of you my blog-a-versary. Three years ago I started this little grand space of mine. I dare to say 'grand' because it has given me the opportunity to grow as an artist, a quilter, and a crafter in general. This space has given me a chance to meet wonderful and talented friends with whom I get to talk, and share the greatness of the creative process. The mosaic above is just a tiny sample of what I've been doing here. In three years I have posted 224. I have uploaded 905 pictures on Flickr; that without counting the swaps, the comments, the e-mail, and the best part: fabric shopping.

As this day approached, I decided that in this occasion I wanted to celebrate big time. Not only I want to celebrate my ability to keep up with this project, but also your recurring visits to my blog, your comments, and your advise in my sewing projects and in life in general. You are the ones that make this blog such a special part of my life.  

That being said, let me introduce the six generous sponsors that have graciously accepted to join us in this celebration with lots of wonderful prizes for this massive giveaway. Here we go:

The Sometimes Crafter is sponsoring us with her lovely Amanda Knitting Bag pattern from her new pattern store.

Nicole, from Follow the White Bunny is sponsoring us with a $10 gift voucher for embroidery patterns from her delicious store.

Chikipita has graciously joined us in this celebration with two lovely cupcake wine stoppers. Aren't they adorable?!?!

Another lovely etsian friend, Sew Deerly Love is sharing with us an eight fat quarter bundle!! How awesome is that!?!?

The Fabric Shoppe is generously sharing with us an Alexander Henry fat quarter bundle.

And last but not least, Fresh Squeezed Fabrics is participating in this blog-a-versary giveaway with a $25 gift certificate. Awesome!!

Wow!! thank you so much to all our generous sponsors for making this blog-a-versary such a great event. I, myself feel like participating in my own giveaway for a chance to win one of these prize.

No catch on this giveaway, just leave me a comment. Since there is lots of prizes, I'm going to leave these giveaway open until Friday, August 12th, 2011. This way we'll have plenty of time to spread the word and have lots of participants. In the meantime I'll keep posting usual. Winners will be picked via random.org, and I'll match the winners to the prizes in the order the generator picks them out.

Thanks again for these three years, and please feel free to join me on Facebook, and Twitter for lots of sharing, chatting, and blog updates.

Truly yours:

Paloma

 

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It's my birthday!!

Oh my!! It's always a bit hard to say it out loud but yes!! It's my birthday! I'm turning 37 today. Here at home, the celebrations started yesterday with a lovely meal at a local brewery, today we're going out again, and we all will have another chocolate cake tonight. But that's not all!!

This week is also my blog-a-versary too. Three years of posting about crafts, patterns, tutorial, recipes, life itself, and swaps. And it's also been three years of cultivating lovely friendships with amazing creative and talented people. This time I decided to celebrate it the right way. Join me, and help me celebrate; and stay tuned for a bunch of giveaways coming this week right here at Three Kitchen Fairies.

XO

 

Clamshells

 

This is my new summer project. I found this pattern in a book called Patchwork, quilting and applique. This is one of the books that made me fall in love with all that there is in the quilting world. I found it at the public library  many years ago, and then ordered through Amazon as a used book.

I started this project last week while visiting my mom. I just took a bunch of scraps, a pincushion with a few pins and needles, thread, scissors and my book. At night, after I put the girls to bed, I spent a couple of hours cutting, and basting the shells to freezer paper which later will be hand pieced together the same way hexies are. I made a bunch of shells but I see that it will take hundreds of them to make a decent quilt size, quite a challenge.

The amount of scraps for this project surpasses the fabris scraps that I have; and what makes this kind of quilt interesting is exactly that: a wide variety of fabric scraps to create a more interesting, and rich quilt. Maybe buying a few fabric scrap bags may be a good idea, they usually come full of surprises...

 

Red and white love

I'm in a 10 days visit at my mother's place. She lives in western NY. The views are mostly farm land, stables, and country roads that take you from one little town to another. Yesterday we stopped at an antique mall, I was actually looking for thread spools but look what I found. I was ecstatic when I went through the quilt racks and found this beauty. After looking at this Flickr photostream, I had a sense that the white and red quilt was the unattainable, and ultimate treasure. If I tell you how much I paid for it you would not believe it. I don't know much about this quilt. The antique shop people said it's at the very least a hundred years old. I had to contact a quilt expert to get more information about it. We pinned it to my mom's gazebo to take a picture. The gazebo measures 10 ft. by side so you get an idea of how big this quilt is.

The hand quilting looks so beautiful. It's in pretty good shape; it has a teeny tiny rip in the red border that is barely noticible.  And judging by this website I feel like I hit the jackpot.

When I walked out of the shop with it, I was literally shaking. My head was in the clouds, and I had to be reminded a couple of times that I was driving, and that I had to pay attention to the road. And since next week will be my b-day, I'm calling this quilt "Happy B-day to me."

Doll Quilt Swap.

Credits here

I've always admired the pictures of the DQS flickr pool, wishing to someday come across the sign up days for the next round. Well, this time I made the cut!! I'm super excited to start working on my partner's quilt, and to start looking at the massive amounts of inspiration on their Flickr group. One of the requirements is a photo mosaic. In my defense I only can say that I'm expecting to be surprise (in a good way ...) Here is my mosaic, these are some my favorite pictures, they are mostly quilt related. I also included some non-quilting related pictures that still inspire me because of their colors, the composition, or just because they make me smile. The possibilities are endless: applique, hand stitching, lettering, buttons, trims...

On a unrelated note: my embroidery pattern is still going as a freebie. Have you downloaded it already?? there is only four more days before it goes to my etsy.

 

 

Long overdue

 

Long, long ago, I participated in the Hoop up, Stitch, & Send swap. I embroidered this sweet little pincushion pattern for one of my partners. Since it was well complimented on Flickr, and it's one of my original patterns, I decided to make it available to everyone. But time goes by, and little projects are sadly put aside to give place to one more project. I think it's call procrastination...

For the last couple of days, I've been debating between either giving it as a freebie, or listing it at my etsy store, and think it deserves to go for free for a while. Here is what I decided to do: for one week this pattern is available as a downloadable pattern. Then after seven days it will be listed on my etsy store. Sounds good?

Click here to get your freebie. Enjoy!!

Edit: A whole week went by. Now this pattern is listed here.

Than you!!!

Giveaway winner

 

Good morning!! It's Tuesday morning already! I had my cup of coffee, and as usual I got carried away with stuff around the house. Still, I didn't forget about the giveaway. Thank you to those who participated. I'm also following you on Twitter, and I'm really happy I got to meet some new crafters. I love all your suggestions, but the unexpected one for was Mr X Stitch. What an out of the ordinary embroidery blog! So far I got to read a few pages, and I love their posts. Definitely worth following.

So the winner of this giveaway is Shelly!

Thanks again, and have a happy sewing week.

Alphabet Glue

 

Last week we were the lucky winners of a giveaway at Follow the White Bunny: Thank you Nicole!! I say "we" because the price was for the whole family  (I would say...) a copy of the Summer edition of Alphabet Glue. I was very curious about it when I saw Nicole's post; to tell you the truth,I was short on summer crafty activities for my girls. I took a look at it as soon as I received it, and I'm fascinated by this e-zine. This wonderful publication has a good amount of crafty activities to make with school-age children, and to stimulate their imagination and creativity. What I like the most is the book listings which are rated by school grade, it makes very easy to pick out a book from the public library.

 

 

Last night we gave it a try and it worked its magic. My two older girls (10 and 8 yrs. old) tried the Story Starting Jar, not a peep for at least an hour... I helped my 6 year old to get started with it, and we had fun together making a silly story about weird bugs that ate bluish grapes.  It's better than watching TV, don't you think??

On a different note: my giveaway is still going on, today is the last day. You can join us here.

 

New pattern

 

Despite the craziness of this week, I was able to keep going with my plans and I started stitching a new embroidery pattern. I'm dying here to show you the whole design!! I think this pattern is a bit more "mature" (embroidery-wise mature) than the rest of my designs, but I'll finish it first. I'm still having a bit of trouble making it presentable to the public as I'm trying really hard to find the way to draw really nice circles. I'll figure this out soon.

On a different note, my giveaway is still open, I really hope you participate as it's kind of short on comments :(

Happy weekend!!