Helen phillips

Hello again dear blog friends.......here i am with a fresh new quilt today..... .........this is called the vintage stars quilt and it has been a true labour of love....... .........many years ago i bought a book by miss read with a beautiful cover illustration by artist jannat messenger......the book went with me from house move to house move until it settled here in the bookshelves at the top of our tall victorian house......i always loved the cover and now and then i'd have another look…

I have a new quilt to show you today...............this is the chrysanthemum quilt and i actually finished it a while ago.......... ...

Today's post is full of happy sewing.......i loved making this happy scrappy quilt, inspired by the patchwork bag i made a while ago for crafts beautiful magazine..........i used many of the same fabrics for the quilt and included the same kind of mix of bright florals, text printed fabrics, checks and stripes..... ........and some dots of course........i also added some haberdashery applique patches..........and a bit of cross stitch, embroidery and some buttons so it had a true 'sewing'…

Happy new week dear readers..............hope you are having a good start.....here are some pretty flowers to begin my post, both real ones and floral fabrics too...... ..............this is the patchwork i've begun with my tilda apple butter fabrics..... .................it is having little red applique apples added to some of the squares.......and next up is a picture or two of the kitchen shelves 'we' put up recently.............made of scaffolding boards with victorian style black…

Happy February everyone......and we have some hearts to begin this valentine's month..... ..........i began stitching together some of the heart blocks for my latest heartstrings quilt....... .....loving choosing the fabrics for the backgrounds and the hearts....lots of pretty scraps to delve into.... ......helped along with nice cups of tea and the first mini chocolate eggs of the new season..... .....another pretty little thing i'm enjoying is this sweet little pink packet of clover…

The end of December and the end of another year.........we feel grateful that our christmas has been cosy, happy and peaceful.... .........we had a lovely christmas day at our elder daughter's beautiful home, with happy cosy family times...... .......and on other cosy winter evenings i've been quilting my baskets quilt by hand...... ........the perfect fireside winter project......... .......my little houses pincushion matches this project well....... ..........i'm loving these cosy winter…

As summer nears its end and autumn is in the air i've been cutting lavender to dry to make little lavender hearts and sachets with.........

Hello again dear readers.......back today with a cosy homely post.....we are all in lockdown again here...the home is best mug took on a new meaning recently..... .....(the quilt being sewn here is my lucky fish quilt).... .........just stitching in the kitchen on a sunny but chilly day.....there are biscuits in the red and white cornishware jar...... .......the quilt top was made last summer but it has been languishing in the to-be-quilted pile for months....now it's coming along quite fast…

Hello lovely readers..........we are enjoying some gorgeously scented sweet peas here today...... ...........our sweet pea plants were a bit slow to get started this year but now they are flowering happily.... ...........one of my favourite things is to pick a bunch of sweet peas and have them near to where i'm working to enjoy the scent and colour all day long..... ............sewing up a scrappy trip around the world quilt using my tilda stash and scraps.....above is a postage stamp…

In Helen Phillips’s The Need, a parent’s nightmares take the form of a home intruder — who looks exactly like her.

Helen Philipps: Scrappy Summer Quilt Finish

The autumn days are warm and sunny here again at the moment and everywhere is looking colourful and beautiful...........as part of my autumn decorating i have hung up some little mushrooms.... ...........i made these decorative mushrooms for my book pretty patchwork gifts here......... .........and here they are in the book.......there are full instructions for making them and a choice of templates......once i have designed a template, i often enlarge or reduce it in a photocopier to make…

Helen Philipps: Hazy Shade of Winter

Welcome to my stop on the candy bloom blog hop today.....you can imagine how pleased i was to be invited to take part by the team at stitch craft create a little while ago......the limited edition candy bloom fabrics are just as lovely as tilda fabrics always are........featuring folklore inspired motifs and using rich shades of red, blue and cream which work so well together and with previous tilda fabric collections too.............. ............i decided to make some projects from my book…

A while ago some of you may remember i showed you a little doll's quilt top made from some of my favourite simple life fabrics by tasha noel from riley blake..........and here is the finished little quilt, keeping winter winnie cosy......... ...........the fabrics are perfect to make children's projects like this little quilt, the small images are so appealing and a good size for cutting patchwork shapes too..........and i love the colours:)............ .........................this tiny…

Today i am showing you some pictures of the two flowery four patch quilts i was working on last year using many of my favourite floral fabric scraps (lots of pam kitty morning and lecien pretties in there)........... ............i began making a straight four patch quilt and then decided to make a floating four patch one as well so i was working on two co ordinating quilts at the same time...... ............here they are together............ ............i love the four patch block....such a…

October is the one time in the year that you find a pumpkin on our step.....and the one time I have lots of orange things around the house....i love the warm and earthy colours of this mellow month and am sorry it has gone by so fast so that here we are already on its very last day.... .......i found some lovely decorations this year......sweet little pumpkins on sticks, golden yellow gourds... .............which i kept in the potting shed until it was time to decorate the house…

Hello dear readers..........happy new week....it feels like monday here after the bank holiday but of course i have to keep remembering it's tuesday.... last week my elder daughter and i had a lovely day out at a local brocante fair............amongst the treasures i found to bring home were a little milking stool.... ..........and a white enamel coffee pot and blue and white pastille tin fresh from france.... ............love all the soft timeworn colours at the brocante...........the old…

It looks like spring here today..... so bright and sunny in my sewing room with lots of flowers and pretty fabrics....but outside it still feels cold and wintry with chilly winds blowing around the house and garden......it is lovely that the days are so much longer now and evenings so much lighter.......... ..............i made this little drawstring bag with some of my favourite fabrics from the pam kitty garden line by lakehouse dry goods which i was so lucky to receive recently to work…