I love the variety of projects in Mollie Makes, and I particularly love finding out about new blogs and discovering new crafters. This project is from last year but I didn’t get round to making it at the time, and I’ve been planning on making it as an autumn project for this year! These Liberty fabric leaves from issue 19 are just gorgeous, and Jenny Dixon’s blog is a great find. Jenny has included a free tutorial to make a different design of leaf on her blog, but I’ve made a leaf that appeared in the magazine (templates are available to download – click here). The fabric I’ve used is Liberty Tana Lawn in Wiltshire Berry print, and I’ve used extra wire here in order to make my leaf into a bookmark.

You will need:

Liberty fabric (it’s a good way to use up your scrap fabric – anything with a small print will work)
Some craft wire
Lightweight interfacing
Wadding
Needle and thread

The first step is to draw around the leaf template that you want to use (I use greaseproof paper to make the templates – it’s really easy to cut out and pin on to any fabric!). Then iron some lightweight interfacing onto the back of your fabric. Fold it in half, pin the template through both sides (so that you can cut two leaves at the same time) and then carefully cut around the template.

Then use the template to cut out another leaf shape on some wadding, cutting it slightly smaller than the fabric leaves. Next, take a long piece of wire and double it to form a little loop at the end before twisting the rest to make a stem. Leave the ends free so that you can put them inside the leaf to act as spines.

Layer the leaves up with the wadding and wire in the middle and then pin it to secure it. Thread a needle with thread and sew the layers together around the edges with a fairly small running stitch.

When the edges are completely sewn and the wire is secure (you may need to add a few little extra stitches at the back to secure it firmly), sew a running stitch to make the spines of the leaf.

Ta-dah! That’s it – a super easy project that looks great and only takes around 30-40 minutes to make

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I love cold and sunny winter mornings when everything is covered in frost. It always looks so beautiful! Now is the time of year when I only really get to appreciate my garden at the weekend when we’re not going anywhere, because during the week it’s dark when we go to work and dark when we come home. This year was a write-off when it comes to the garden – it rained so much this summer that I spent most of my time looking out of the window at the rain and wondering if it would ever stop!

So today I’m at home, just doing a few jobs around the house and a bit of crafting this afternoon, and I decided to go out and take a few photos. The frosty leaves look so wonderful – I’m glad I went out just when the light was right!

When we first moved in to our house (which is almost three years ago now) there were various garden ornaments which the previous owners had left behind. I’m not really a huge fan of garden ornaments, so the meerkats were quickly disposed of, but there was one that I couldn’t bring myself to throw away. This could be to do with the fact that we gave him a name, so I felt a bit more attached to him – thank goodness I didn’t name the meercats! This is Hadrian, and he still lives in our garden:

I’m not sure if he is actually Roman – I suppose he could be Greek…But we live near to the Newcastle end of Hadrian’s Wall, so we couldn’t really call him anything else! Tom’s Mum thought that he looked a bit chilly when she first saw him, and decided to knit him a scarf with scraps of wool that she had left over from sock knitting. I’ve heard that a mini bobble hat might be on the way at some point too, so he’ll be toasty warm all year round!

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