There once was an ugly duckling.............

There is definitely no doubt about it. This pouffe is quite simply......."feio....brutta.....lelijk.....brutto.....ruma".....UGG-ER-LY, in anybody's language!

I happened upon this ugly duckling a little a while ago at my favourite market. It's beauty was long gone, hidden under years of wear and tear. But.....it had great bones, it was a great size and had oodles of squashy comfort for one's tippy toes; so of course it came home with me.

But....if this Little Muffet was going to sit on this little tuffet, or indeed rest her tippy toes on it, then it was going to need a little upholstery job. A little tarting up was needed to hide it's flaws. Indeed, this little tuffet needed a little sprucing up with some lovely  new fabric and just a little machine sketching, magic. It needed to be transformed from an ugly duckling to a, dare I say it, a lovely new swan.

I chose a lovely grey, linen look, upholstery fabric and snipped oodles of flowers from my fabric stash. Here are some of the flowers and patterns that have oodles of possibilities.

First things first. I draped the fabric over the pouffe with the right side of the fabric facing the right side of the pouffe. I chose a wide fabric so that I could do this without too much fussing around. Who wants to waste time fussing, when one's fingers are itching to commence the stitching magic! I pinned the four sides making sure it was a snug fit with a good size hem at the bottom.

I then trimmed the sides within a couple of centimetres of the seams.

Turning the fabric right side out, now was the time to have a little fun. I ironed on vliesofix to the back of flowers and the other pretties and carefully snipped the flowers, butterflies, birds and whatever else founded their way onto the fabric, placing them in a meandering fashion across the fabric. When happy with my arrangement, the magic of machine sketching began.

First things first. To draw with your machine, you need to drop the feed dogs on your machine. This enables you to move the fabric under the needle in any direction, as fast or as slow as you desire. You will need a free-motion embroidery foot, also called a darning foot. With my stitch length on the machine set on zero, I was ready for a little magic.

Drawing around the outside of each pretty with my machine, moving my fabric as one would do with a pencil is truly the best fun. Normally I would only 'draw' around each piece a couple of times but as this fabric was polyester, I found three or four times was better. As it wasn't 100% cotton each smidgeon of a flower frayed within an inch of it's life. This step took a lot longer than would normally be the case. I do wish I had selected cotton, but this fabric was on hand and I didn't have enough cotton fabric with suitable flowers; and of course these flowers were pretty, giving me the look I wanted. What's a couple of extra days sewing, pulling one's hair out by the roots, anyway. Remember.....it is always about the look. I know, I know, it is a shallow gal that I am....but you knew that already. =)

Flowers meandering their way prettily around the fabric with butterflies fluttering their wings to the sweet tune of the nearby bird song.

I patiently machine stitched around each piece, going with the flow; really. I wanted a flowing, organic look. I didn't want any of the sides or the top to look the same. I wanted a feeling of whimsical whimsy.

On two of the sides I thought I might machine sketch some sweet birdies in bird cages, hanging from the flowers.

Oh look, there's Maisie peeking through the flowers. She is patiently waiting outside my sewing room window for her morning walk. Not today, Maisie, there is more magic to be stitched.

After days and days of machine sketching, the finished fabric is now ready to cover that ugly duckling.

I affixed the cover to the pouffe, pulling it firmly for a snug fit, stapling the fabric to the underside of the  pouffe, all the way round.

Voila, my new pouffe.......Miss Muffet's lovely new tuffet. So much prettier, than what was before.

Not an ugly duckling any more.

After all that machine sketching, surely it must be time for a spot of tea.

It must be time for this little Miss Muffet to rest her tippy toes on her gorgeous new tuffet and enjoy a little viewing of Miss Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy......oh and of course knit some more of her pretty, aran jumper. I am afraid this woolly has been rather neglected this week. Perhaps some of that stitching magic can be transferred to a little knitting.

Have the most wonderful week, everyone. Until the next time......

Linking this week to Stephanie's, Roses of Inspiration
Bernideen's BTTCG Blog Party
Jann's, Share Your Cup Thursday
Mary's Sweet Inspiration Party

And the hearts go to.........

Oh yes, the hearts. Those prettily embellished, lavender fragrant hearts which are a giveaway for my GYB party post.....remember them?? Here is a photo to help jolt your memory. Today is the day when my significant other, randomly draws out from a very big hat, two lovely ladies' names.

Drum roll please...........Peggy Reed and Ljubinka.......two hearts will soon be winging their way over land and sea, to your li'l corner of the world. Congratulations ladies...but...you are both naughty as you couldn't make up your minds as to which ones tickled your fancy. It seems both of you lovely ladies are enamoured with all of these pretties. Mmmm...decisions....decisions!!

I fear, I cannot choose, so my significant other has chosen his two favourites.......

For the lovely Peggy, he has chosen No. 2......

And...for the lovely Ljubinka, he has chosen No. 8.....

Now of course,  Peggy and Ljubinka, if perchance you prefer any of the other hearts instead of these two, please do let me know.

Peggy......you will need to let me know your address as I am afraid I cannot contact you, as you seem to be a No Reply Blogger.

Thank you to everyone who visited my blog over these last couple of weeks and left such lovely comments. It was a pleasure to 'meet' you and in turn visit your li'l corner of the world and drink in your own imaginative creativity! I look forward to visiting your lovely blogs over and over again and delight in all the goings on in your delightful posts.

AND....thank you to Vicki of '2Bags Full' for all your hard work in hosting this fun party, it was so much fun!

NOW.....besides trying to make life changing decisions as to which lovely lady gets which pretty heart sachet....what else have I been up to this week??

Well..........the 'Kim Sharman School of Stitching Excellence' started again with a flurry of activity and excitement. I had four new students. Yes indeedy, they just keep coming!! It seems I now have a waiting list!! Incredible!!

I have been working on this gorgeous yo-yo quilt that a lady asked me to finish for her grandmother. She wanted me to back it but of course that meant hand stitching it up and down the length of it, through the back, in the middl'e of each yo-yo. As this quilt is approx. 3 metres x 2.5 metres, it took a while.

I find row after row of monotonous hand quilting a wee bit tedious. Also, this quilt was stitched by an older lady, so over time  a lot of the yo-yos have unravelled, which meant  I had to do a lot of extra fixer-uppering before I could send it on home. As much as I love all these gorgeous yo-yos, I must admit I am so, so happy to see the end of this lovely as it had been sitting on my 'to do' pile for a very, very long time. So, so happy.....in fact, deliriously happy.....that my 'Quasimodo', hunch back, bent-like body is doing a happy dance!!

As February is the month of  all things LOVE, I decided to stitch a quick, free hand machine, sketched cushion.

I cut out a simple shape of a house from some pink fabric, stitched it to the hessian and then stitched the words and flowers free hand. No drawings, no tracing, just free hand sketching. So, so easy; so, so quick; and so, so very pink!! But......that suits me perfectly fine as it goes perfectly with my bright pink front door!

It sits alongside my pretty heart, hessian cushion; both resting on a rather antiquated oak settee on the front porch; welcoming all and sundry who enter through our front gate.

I love to sit on the front porch and enjoy a cuppa. It is the prettiest spot, drinking in the Zinnias, Dahlias, Gladioli, Cosmos, Salvias, Anemones and all the other pretty Summer flowers. And of course peeping over the front fence the glorious Hydrangeas. This year these beautiful mop-head, prima donnas,  are bigger and better than ever before! They are quite stunning.....AND.....they live in vases for weeks. Summer in Tassie is burgeoning with floral delight!

Each morning has found me wandering around the garden, picking bounteous bouquets of floralicious delight to spread throughout our home. When it comes to blossoms....'tis my unwavering opinion, more is never enough! I know I have said it before......when I grow up I really, really want to be a florist!!

Colourful and happy Dahlias.

Pretty in Pink, Cosmos.

Beautiful blue, blue Hydrangeas. These flowers really do make my heart sing! Oh, and of course, pretty tea cups and even prettier teapots, have also been known to make my heart go pit-a-pat!!

There is just something about the hue blue, is there not?? Yes indeedy, blue is my favourite hue! What's yours??

So...there you have it; a week filled with teaching, a little stitching and oodles of walks in our lovely garden, gathering bounteous bouquets of blossomy delight.

Sending you all oodles of LOVE and a bouquet of  'pretty as a picture' Hydrangeas to brighten your day!

Until the next time you visit my li'l corner of the world; have the most wonderful weekend, filled with a little LOVE.........'tis toodles from me!

Grow Your Blog Party.....and a giveaway

A lovely hello to all of you whom are having a li'l bo-peep at my blog for the very first time. 'Tis a pleasure to be a part of Vicki's '2 Bags Full' Grow your Blog party.

And....for those of you lovelies who follow my drivel of a blog, you are most welcome as well......though I fear as we are already acquainted, you have  been enlightened as to the ins and outs of li'l ole me.....just pretend that we have never had the pleasure of meeting and 'enjoy' the ride!

My name is Kim and I live with my husband, in a rural idyll in Tasmania which is a tiny island way, way down at the bottom of the world. Our humble li'l ole abode is surrounded by vignettes of  lush green paddocks which change daily with a roving kaleidoscope of black and white bovine, a country winding road, aged gum trees perfectly placed as if nature had the view from my picture windows in mind when planting each seed; and majestic purple, opalescent mountains, ascending to kiss glorious, Monet-esque sunsets off into the distance......oh..... and  a pretty as a picture garden of floralicious delight lovingly tended by my li'l garden gnome husband. Yes indeedy, everywhere I look there is a richly, patterned tapestry of  God's glorious handiwork of joyous inspiration, stirring me to create.

My ever faithful, walking companion, Miss Maisie, drinking in the fragrance of the beautiful lavender. She is always a willing participant for a model shoot!

Yes indeedy, this li'l corner of the world in which I live ain't half bad............ain't half bad at all!!

I'm a gal who delights in all things creative. I love to design, I love to create and I love to write. So for me, the designing, the stitching, the making; and then the writing of a blog is a perfect fit for me. I cannot imagine a day without some form of creativity being enjoyed; whether it is putting fingers to keyboard and penning a written piece, or stitching, or knitting some lovely. Creating for me really is play. Most every day (and some evenings) I pirouette along my botanical inspired hallway and enter my happy sewing room in readiness for a li'l dreaming, a li'l designing, a li'l creating and fun, fun, fun!

My sewing room is my own li'l creative hub. It is a place where I express my own unique style and create. It is a space to just be. My design process always starts with a whisper of an idea, then the dreaming, then the plotting, then the creating. I am always amazed how a smidgen of an idea, a teeny, tiny thought develops into a finished creation.

Yes indeedy, me thinks that by both day and night, my bright and happy sewing room is a wonderful place in which those teeny, tiny ideations, that seem to collide all too frequently around in my brain pan at a fervid pace, translate into a pretty of some kind! I could do a lot worse.....don't you think??

I adore quilts. I love to stitch quilts. Indeed, she who has the most quilts (fabric, ribbons, laces, buttons etc etc).....wins....well she does, doesn't she??

The two 'quilts' on the top, the cathedral window and the postage stamp, are two works in progress. I am a gal that seems to fashion oodles of pretties at once. 'Tis very naughty of me, but I have a sneaky suspicion I am not the only one.

I have a penchant for hexagon quilts. Oh all right, I'll come clean, I confess, I am addicted to them! Yes indeedy, when I spy with my beady li'l eye a hexagon quilt, I have been known to go in to a state of apoplectic shock, when only an oxygen tank can revive me! I adore hexies.

I happened upon a wonderful method for sewing hexagon quilts quite a few years ago. Individual hexagons are sewn with the top fabric, the batting and the backing fabric all at once and then a little of the backing fabric is brought to the front to form a narrow border or a frame if you like. Then the finished hexagons are whipped stitched together at the back to form the quilt.

My first 'hexie' that I ever fashioned is this pastel pretty. Stitched from hundreds of pretty fabric scraps, it is an oft-used and faded quilt and is one of my favourites.

My joyous, purple coloured, hexagon quilt tickles my bohemian spirit! This 'pretty' is embellished with oodles and oodles of french laces, vintage jewellery, antique buttons, beads and gorgeous flowers fashioned from a smattering of pretty ribbons. Oops an overload of colour I fear....but then I am an "over-the-top" kinda gal! This hexie is  a quilt where I twirled and twirled sumptuous fabrics, laces, ribbons; a li'l bit of this and a li'l bit of that, round and round in a merry dance.

My pastel hexie.....softer in hue but nevertheless oozing with embellishment and prettiness!

AND.....then there is "Little Miss Rhapsody in Blue". I fashioned this quilt for a dear friend's 50th birthday and I am afraid that I went a li'l overboard with the embellishment......just a tad!

This pretty hexie sits ever so prettily on my bed, in my boudoir.

Now of course, in order for me to embellish the quilts and cushions and other pretties that I fashion, I need an embroidered pretty or two....oh alright...... I need oodles of embroidered pretties......my dowry of cloth; which more often than not overflows from many, many receptacles.

I love to stitch baskets of  blossomy delight either filling them with  li'l snippets of crochet doilies or fashioning oodles of flowers out of pretty ribbons. Fashioning flowers and leaves from pretty ribbons is the most joyous of ways to spend a li'l time.

One can never have too many cushions.......can one?? These cushions went with me to a market.....and surprisingly enough they all skedaddled off to lovely homes to perk up others' interiors!

I am a gal that LURVES to dabble in free hand machine sketching! To draw or in my case, doodle with machine and thread is the best fun. Free hand machine stitching is something that really tickles my fancy. This style of stitching satisfies my love to stitch by the seat of my pants. It satisfies my impetus to veer off that straight and narrow line of monotonous straight stitching and explore the wiggly and crooked lines.

Have a lookity look at some of the lovelies that I have sketched free hand with my trusty ole machine.  A length of fabric upon which I free hand machine stitched a tableau of cute children picking apples from gnarled apple trees, children chatting, children swinging on swings, children climbing trees, children riding bikes....children laughing, chatting and having oodles of fun. I then adhered the fabric panel to the lampshade.

Here is another example of a li'l free hand sketching. This time I stitched a panel approximately 2 metres in length. I stitched a street scape where quaint Victorian houses, wrought iron fences, happy children, very chic ladies, the odd beetle car or two abound. I decided to make this panel into a valance to hang on my kitchen window.

I am a gal who adores all things vintage. I love wandering around markets, always on the lookout for a treasure or two to bring home to live with me for a li'l while......a piece of vintage jewellery, an antique button or two, or a pretty trifling or two. I am always fossicking for embroidered doilies and tablecloths lovingly stitched by ladies in a bygone era, to tart up a jacket, to embellish a quilt, to recover a much loved old chair that has seen better days; to add to a curtain that I am fashioning for our home. Yes indeedy, as 'hinted' previously, I re-use the embroideries in all manner of projects that make my heart go pit-a-pat.

Curtains fashioned with embroidered pretties abound in my li'l ole abode! Why buy metre upon metre of curtaining fabric when one can rummage around in one's plethora of suitcases/hat boxes and the like, all spilling over with embroidered pretties and fabric remnants, and fashion a unique, one-of-a-kind window covering.

Just a couple of upcycled jackets that I tarted up with a doily or two, some upholstery fringing, some french lace and the odd vintage pretty or two!

These lampshades had seen better days so of course I tarted them up with pretties from my dowry of cloth.

Just a few Christmas stockings I stitched using a slew of lace, vintage fabrics and oodles of pretties. Ooh-la-la.......oh so Parisian!

Every now and then my fingers are found clickity clacketing feverishly away on a woolly garment of some kind or another.

Most school day mornings I can be found designing and preparing a stitching project for the school children who visit my humble abode each afternoon in readiness for a sewing lesson. Yes indeedy, each afternoon, the school bus hurtles along our winding country road, screeches to a stop, ejects excited li'l earthlings in readiness for a fun afternoon of stitching, chatter and laughter. Here are some of the stitching lovelies that one li'l girl has created whilst she has been attending "The Kim Sharman School of Stitching Excellence"....(my tongue is firmly fixed in my cheek!!). Of course all the children who attend The Kim Sharman School of Stitching Excellence are prodigiously talented!

AND........when I do find a li'l time, there is nothing I would rather do than spend an hour or two, with my head buried in a book. Yes indeedy, love, love, LURVE to read!

So there you have it. I'm just a gal who loves to spend oodles of her time playing with all things creative. Creativity for me is a window to my soul....it is who I am; it gives every day a measure of oomph! If you have stuck with me to the end and read this rather lengthy post to the very last word......congratulations.....AND a very big thank you.

Me thinks just for that herculean effort on your part, you deserve to be rewarded with a li'l pretty, fashioned by li'l ole me. Yes indeedy, if you would like to leave a comment, I will draw out not one, but two of your names and one of these lavender-filled heart sachets with just a li'l embellishment, will be winging their way to you over land and sea. Now......just in case the two lucky winners take a liking to the same heart sachet, please inform me of your second choice as well.

If you are a No-reply Blogger, please add your email address at the end of your comment. Entries for the giveaway close on the 15th February. If your name is one of the successful ones I will contact you on the 15th February. Vicky from 2 Bags Full has done a stellar job in organising this blog hop, so do pop over  here to see the full list of participants who are kicking up their heels and partying on!!

So it's toodles from me. I am off to discover some delightful new blogs and have a bo peep at what other lovely bloggers are up to. Yes indeedy, I am off to be inspired by others' lovely blogs and their uniquely, beautiful imaginations and creativity. Thank you ever so much for visiting; it is truly a delight to 'meet' you. Please do pop by again; it would make my li'l ole heart sing a happy song if you were to stopover, down here at the bottom of the world for another visit!