A Birthday Present for a little friend

One of Madeleine's friends turned 7 yesterday and she is having a party this afternoon. Her Mum, Stephanie,  is a great friend of mine and crafty too. She is making her daughter a sewing kit (including one of her gorgeous felt pincushions) as a birthday gift so we decided to give Olivia a kit too. A Kitty Kit.

The gift is everything she needs to make the cute kitten bag in the picture.

I cut everything out for her, ready to make. The instructions came from my favourite book at the moment Emma Hardy's Sewing for Children.

I tucked it all into a little box and stuck a picture of the bag on top.

The present was wrapped in some recycled tissue paper and I used this tutorial from MADE to make the paper napkin flower. I once made about 200 of these out of toilet paper to decorate a ballroom. How I had the patience to tease out all those tiny paper layers I don't know!

Maddy is busy making her a birthday card as I type.

I think a few of Maddy's friends will be getting gifts like this over the next few months!

Hope you have a lovely day to day.

Sewing for Children by Emma Hardy

When we came back from the school run this morning, Eloise and I were extremely excited to find a Fishpond parcel waiting on the doorstep. It was Emma Hardy's latest book: Sewing for Children. I have all of her other books and love the way she explains things. Her books are beautifully illustrated too and full of gorgeous things to make so when I saw she had a book aimed at children I had to have it for my girls.

It's aimed at 3 and above and Eloise (aged 3 1/2) was desperate to get stuck into learning to sew as soon as the book arrived. She chose to make a spoon dolly, which was lucky as it was the easiest project in the book and this was her first time handling a needle and thread. The only sewing involved was a running stitch across the top of the dress to gather it, but she just loved it!

The button is her nose in case you hadn't gathered that!

As soon as she finished this one, she immediately wanted to make another. Could you resist this face?

Needless to say we now have to go and buy some more wooden spoons to replace the ones that are missing from the kitchen drawer.