Summer Holidays

How is it possible that we are reaching the end of the school summer holidays already here in England?   They seem to have flown by even with all the strangeness that surrounds us at the moment.   Usually our holidays are filled with wonderful days out with groups of friends to local attractions, we are very lucky to live in an area where there are bountiful choices of child friendly places to go, but for obvious reasons this year has been slightly different!   We have almost treated it like we are still in full lockdown and stayed in our family bubble for the majority of the time but even so we have had some lovely days out picnicking and paddling in local woods and even a couple of trips to the family static caravan in Flamborough.   

On the days when the weather was not so good we made some things for Chloe’s bedroom: We transformed a cardboard box and leftover wallpaper into a wardrobe for her teddies clothes; and an old duvet cover into a den.

Because of all of this, I haven’t had that much free time for sewing, which is why this is my first post for a while.   But when I have had time, I have been making a few face masks for the family and even a couple of birthday presents (but I can only reveal one at the moment!):

I have had lots of ideas for new products and modifications to my work over the summer which I hope to share with you very soon.  When I’ve managed to grasp a few moments with my sewing machine I have been experimenting with a few things to broaden my embroidery and appliqué  skills and  I am looking forward to getting back in front of the sewing machine on a more regular basis to expand on these - I’m quite exited, watch this space!

Something a little different

After the success of Freddy the Frog my Dad asked me to do another piece for him, this time from one of his ex-work colleagues.   I don’t normally do pictures by adults but I’m always up for a challenge so I thought I should give it a go.   The story behind the picture is that it was drawn while Dad and his colleagues were on one of their work team-building trips to the south of France.   One of the days they were split into teams and had to do tasks throughout the day.   This drawing was the final task and won the contest for my Dad’s team.   The colleague who drew it gave it to my Dad as a memento and he has always treasured it, putting it in a frame in his home office.   So, he asked me to make a textile piece from it so that he can send it to the original artist.   Here is the result:

Happy Father’s Day (a little belated!)

This week I have a special picture to share with you.   This is the gift that I gave my dad for Father’s Day.   I asked my 5 year old daughter and her 6 year old cousin to draw a picture of their grandad and they did not disappoint.   As soon as I asked my daughter to draw him her excited response was “I’m definitely drawing him in shorts because he always wears shorts!”, my nephew even managed to include his ever-present flip-flops!

The picture that my daughter drew was in colour so I honoured her colour scheme but my nephew’s drawing was in pencil so this gave me some artistic licence to choose the colours.  

My nephew is very much into Marvel superhero characters and I happened to be gifted some superhero fabric from the lovely Jen at Little T’s Haberdashery so this was the perfect fit for grandad’s t-shirt and was a good way to differentiate that the two drawings were from the two children.

Here is the finished picture:

Dad was very pleased with his picture and within minutes of opening had hung it in prime position on his office wall.  😊

If you like this and would like a similar picture making please contact me via one of the links on the right-hand side of the blog page or email me at annamaltoys@gmail.com.

Welcome back. 😃

This is one of the first pieces that I made from one of my daughter’s drawings.  
It is now up in my studio to give inspiration for future work.

Hello! And Welcome to my new and updated blog. It has been a while since my last post and this is because I took a break to have a family.   My daughter is now at school and I have decided to take the plunge and get back into making and posting my creations.   I hope you like my new work - and if you do please share, like and comment!

Recently I have come back to embroidery and have discovered a different technique for free-machine embroidery and now I am hooked!  My daughter was my inspiration, her pictures are so full of colour and freedom that they just had to be made into embroidery.   Children have a very different approach to art than adults and their work is so free, they see the world so differently and this is wonderful to capture in my work.   If you would like your children’s artwork to be transformed into a forever-love item (they also make lovely and unique presents!) then please contact me for a quotation either through this page or my email - annamaltoys@gmail.com.   You will soon also be able to find some of my work for sale on Etsy.

Thank you for looking at my work.

This is a piece from one of my friend’s daughter -  it was her Mother’s Day card.