Hoppy Easter! To be fair, Easter has never really been a thing in our house until the children were old enough to realise that Easter = Chocolate eggs and cute bunnies. Now, Isla can't help herself but squeal with delight every time we see Easter decorations out in the wild - ohhhh look, this is the cutest bunny I've ever seen! No, this is the cutest bunny I've ever seen. Ohmygoshmom have you seen this one? There is a lot of flapping and ohmygoshing and shrieks. 

Anyway, I made a quick and easy cushion which - here in Abu Dhabi, is the height of my Easter decorations. It is an IKEA Sanela cushion which is soft cotton velvet, perfect for a little soft and fluffy Easter bunny. 

Did you know that IKEA makes the best embroidery blanks? I think it's because they are designed to get a lot of use so they're extra sturdy and resilient. I'm so ridiculously spoilt as I've got an embroidery machine, so, after seam ripping one side of the cushion, I just hooped it up and used this Mister Bun's Gardening Service design from Embroidery Library (here). 45 minutes later, and a few seams resewn, and done! You could, of course, skip the seam ripping and do the stitches by hand. The cushion cover itself was 25 dirhams, which is (according to Google this morning) £4.92. The fabric for the cover would have cost me more, so using a premade cover works well all-round.

My embroidery machine is a Janome 550e which comes with the very large R28b hoop (200 x 280) - perfect for cushions. When I was umming and ahhing about getting the machine about a year ago, I was so worried that it would be another one of those things - you know, the kitchen appliances that only get used once a month when you remember them (I'm talking to you, juicer). But no! I use this one at least once a week and usually for three or four different projects in one sitting: gifts, personalised pouches, little wildflowers, motifs on dresses, you name it. It is amazing, and I am so glad that I went ahead with it. 

Book an appointment with Mister Bun's Gardening Service was one of the clue's in our fun little egg hunt this morning - and the children dashed off without a second thought. They love this cushion cover where it sits pride of place in the middle of the couch! Now, after a very succesful egg hunt and a breakfast of chocolate and caramels, Isla is leaning back against the cushion with her feet up, very carefully composing a 'thank you' letter for the Easter Bunny. Be still my beating heart. 

I've always wanted to make a Farmer's Wife Quilt. I think it is one of the rites of passage for a quilter - like upgrading to proper quilting thread, or discovering that you have more quilting rulers than is strictly necessary. Farmer's Wife Quilt? You've arrived. 

I fell in love with Lori Holt's Farm Girl Vintage 2 when she released it in 2015, but at that stage I had a tiny baby, another one on the way, and absolutely zero sewing time. I would look at it wistfully on instagram and blogs, watching everyone make their beautiful Farm Girl Vintage quilts while I sterilised baby bottles, changed nappies and packed moving boxes. 

Fast forward six years later (!) and the babies are both a little bit bigger and quite self sufficient. There are no more nappies. The bottle steriliser is gone and there is space for a sewing machine (or two). And I'm ready. I'm ready for slow stitching, fabric gathering, block measuring, and quilting. I'm ready for 50 pieced and quilted blocks, and to indulge in a Farmer's Wife Quilt with a difference. This isn't the old-fashioned quilt of yesteryear. Although those too are beautiful, the cheerful blocks and bright colours of the Farm Girl Vintage quilt are just more - me. 

There are two Farm Girl Vintage books (creatively named Farm Girl Vintage and Farm Girl Vintage 2!). In the sampler pattern (on the front cover of the Farm Girl Vintage 2 book above) there are 20 12-inch blocks and 30 6-inch blocks, and I chose blocks from both books based on what I'd have in my farm if I were lucky enough to live on one! It was really slow going, especially when trying to fit blocks within the tiny moments I've managed to carve out in the early mornings or late afternoons. But it is so worth it. 

I quilted each block differently, and I really like the way that it makes the blocks pop out. I left some small areas unquilted - like the yellow stripes on the bee's body, or the cat face, or the heart in the middle of the beehive. I like that they're puffy and dimensional. 
I really love these yarn skeins! It's the "Grandma's Crochet" block. In my case, it's definitely Mama's Crochet, I don't think either of my grandmothers are known for their crochet.This is the "Evening Star" block. This was my first quilt block for the whole quilt, and I absolutely love these fabrics and the design. We have spent many, many nights under the desert sky watching the stars come out and swirl across the sky in a way that is totally unique to the Abu Dhabi terrain. The beauty of wild camping, which we've been fortunate enough to do for the past year or so, is that you're all alone in the great outdoors and there are no lights to obscure the sky and no other people around to interfere with the quiet of the great outdoors. It's really very magical!

Sometimes it is really difficult being so far away from friends and family, but I'm ever so grateful for technology which helps to bring us a bit closer. Whatsapp and zoom calls are amazing and have become part of the norm, especially during covid. 

Sadie, in England, sent me a picture she had taken of her own oreo millionaires that she'd bought from a local baker. They were delicious-looking, but a bit grey on top instead of a rich chocolate colour, and overall a bit disappointing, she said, because they smelled of the paper they were wrapped in. Still, they looked amazing and I wondered if we could easily find a recipe online to replicate these little morsels of oreo yumminess here in Abu Dhabi. 

In short - yes, you can find just about anything on the internet. There's a really scrumptious and easy recipe over on Jane's Patisserie blog (here) which is everything an oreo millionaire should be. 

Isn't it amazing that an idea that starts in the snowy east of England can make its way to the deserts of Abu Dhabi and settle eventually in the warmth of the Cape all the way at the furthest tip of Africa? It is like magic!

Time is flying so quickly now that schools have gone back. I feel like you blink and the days just disappear! There's so much running around to do - wash school uniforms, make school lunches, fill waterbottles, drop kids off, tidy up, squeeze in work for a few hours, pick kids up, make food, repeat! I spend a lot of time telling the children to go! After being still for so long during lockdown with curfew restritions, it feels quite liberating. 

I've been trying to make time every day for me in all of this craziness, even if it is just half an hour, so I've been getting through my backlog of unifinished projects and have even started a few new ones. I've really appreciated a slow and happy little bit of time to punctuate all the hurry, it is my happy place.

The Noodlehead Minimalist Wallet (Paid Pattern Here) has been on my to-do list forever; I really like the mini size wallet, it is perfect for grabbing on the way out the door (especially here, where you must carry your Emirates ID with you when you leave the house) without having to take a whole bag. 

The inside has a slip pouch in the front which fits a card or two very comfortably, a zip pouch in the middle for coins, and a pocket behind the zip pouch for notes or extra cards. That's it. It folds down, snaps close, and done. Yalla! The whole wallet took about an hour to put together, which included trying to make heads or tails of the instructions. In the end, I watched a youtube video of someone sewing it up and then it all suddenly clicked together and I made it easily. I used a combination of hot pink and dark denim, which is my go-to at the moment, and a tiny bit of cork for the flap. And I am so glad that I brought my KAM snap setter with me when we moved over! It seems to be getting a lot of use. 

Overall, the pattern came together well and has been made so many times by so many people online that it wasn't hard to find ideas, inspiration and a bit of help when I needed it. I'd make it again, especially for gifts. 

Happy New Year to you and yours! I'm so glad to see the end of 2020, as I'm sure you are too. It was a year unlike any other, and I still shudder when I think about our lockdown here in Abu Dhabi. As we are in an apartment 27 floors up, we didn't have access to a garden (oh how I longed to have our garden back in England! Or a balcony, at the least) and I think it's amazing that we were all still friends by the time we were allowed out for "socially distanced exercise". We miss our family and friends, not only in England but in South Africa as well - I don't think that the world has ever felt so big before, or so far away. We are all in this together, but apart.

Happy New Year from us and all the dinosaurs!