Today was one of the hottest, most exhausting, most enjoyable days ever.

My lovely Twitter and now real life friend, Sophie is an interior stylist and we've been plotting and planning to have my house featured in a magazine for quite some time. So much so that it was hard to believe that his day had come.

Today was Shoot Day.

Originally the house was to be featured in Ideal Home Magazine, but since then they have launched a new magazine, Style at Home and that's where it's being used for.

I spent most of last week getting ship shape (hence the big studio and Ruby room tidy up) and doing all those finishing touches to the house that had been needing to be done for months. I wasn't entirely sure even then that the house was ready, and I was incredibly worried about today.

All the negative feelings and worries were very swiftly dissipated when Sophie and her fab photographer, Oli turned up this morning.

Whilst Sophie spread her magic touch around my house, moving things here there and everywhere with her clever eye for detail, Oli and I were enjoying Hampton talk - it transpired that Oli lives a stone's throw from where we lived in London.

Whilst today was incredibly hard work, the most of it obviously done by Sophie and Oli, it was also, as I said, one of the most enjoyable. The sunshine made it incredibly exhausting, but also shed a beautiful light on the rooms (at least it looked like it from the sneaky glimpses I got from Oli's amazing shots.)

The house is due to be featured in September's edition of Style at Home, due out at the beginning of August. I know...so soon! I was nervous about today and am equally nervous about that, despite being very confident that Sophie and Oli have done an amazing job.

Having tidied my studio this week and cleared out and sorted through all my fabrics, the scrap buckets were crying out to me.

Coupled with being in a manic sewing mood to accessorise all the clean freshly sorted rooms, I couldn't rest until I'd played with some of the scraps.

Some of my scraps are so diddy that at the time, I'm not actually sure why I keep them, but when projects like this come to mind, it reminds me why I never, and I mean NEVER throw away any fabrics. Even the teeniest inch square piece of loveliness has a use.

This was the easiest, quickest, prettiest quilt I have ever made. I simply laid scraps onto wadding until I'd filled all the gaps. Then it was a matter of sewing every edge in place. There's no front-to-front sewing going on here. This one is all about the raw edges.

A quick one piece plain backing was sewn on and then I whipped up some green stripy binding (oh, I'm such a pro at binding now) and before you knew it even the dollies had a new quilt.

As predicted, Ruby wants a full size version for her bed.

Not sure that will be quite so quick to whip up...

The girlie quilt is finished...

I seriously can't understand how Noah thinks this is girlie.

If you asked a girl what colours she wanted her quilt to be made in, I'm pretty sure grey, black and red would hardly be mentioned.

And there isn't a flower or heart in sight.

I lined up various fabrics for the binding - (btw that's the first time I have bound a quilt, so I have been doing a little celebratory dance having accomplished that) - and decided to use the black Kei dots to just be sure it was as far from girlie as possible.

Still too girlie.

My friend Tara put the nail on the head. Maybe quilts in general are more girlie, being snuggly and cosy and all that. I think she has a point.

I'm pretty sure that anything I did for Noah, even quilting his beloved Arsenal badge on it, would be too girlie for this boy wonder.

ps Noah...that poster so has to go...

Some days my postie gets a nice surprise...he doesn't have a mail bag weighed down with fabrics.

Most days however he does and today all these yummies arrived at once. It's a good job he's so lovely.

These bottom 3 are beautiful vintage pieces I bought from Peachy Vintage. Whilst I was buying more of the gorgeous pink floral from Jess, I snuck in these other 2 into the shopping basket.

This one below is going to be used for the quilt for my bed. I haven't quite decided whether it's going to be part of the quilt or the binding. Will see how it all comes together...WHEN I get around to doing it.

I have no particular plans for this fresh blue and green floral. It just seemed rude not to buy it while I was shopping.

I'm having a bit of a thing for vintage fabric at the moment, so I think you will see quite a lot more pieces making their way into my collection.

Kei dots are one of my favourite ever dots and I chose this one to bind the quilt I'm doing for Noah and hopefully make it a little less girlie than he currently think it looks (I know...I don't think it does either, but thank you for your comments confirming it). Kate's speedy service meant that I didn't have to wait more than a day for it.

So guess what I'll be doing tonight??

The final fabric purchase that arrived today was 2 yards of Heath in metal. Due to my penchant for grey, I can never have enough basic grey fabric in my stash. I'm also going to use it for my screen printing designs. I think (hope) it will work well.

And here's where the good news for you comes in...

Here below is just a section of my fabric stash.

I've been through various phases and tastes over the years and whilst I have no doubts that this isn't going to stop in any hurry, there are a lot of fabrics in here that I no longer need or can envisage using. There are some fantastic fabrics in here that I have decided to part with. I'm going to be listing a lot of it in my Etsy shop very soon. There will be some yardage, some FQs and some great scrap packs.

So keep an eye out for a heads up as to when it will arrive as you will hear it here first. If you want a very special "tell me before anyone else" then just leave me a comment of how I can reach you. There's plenty here for everyone!

I've spent a lot of time on my machine these last few days.

Whether it's been sewing up some of my screen prints, or creating a new quilt for Noah (how he can say this is girlie, I have no idea), or sewing up some sweet softies that I've been wanting to try out since buying Kajsa's fab book Scandinavian Stitches.

These dolls are based on her angels and I've put my own slant on them making them patchwork dresses. I love a project that is quick and easy to make up and has instant appeal and impact. In fact these are just 2 so far of a long line of patchy dolls that I'm planning to make.

If you don't know Kajsa's book you really should seek it out as it's full of fab projects that are so depictive of her unique style.

Rather than have all yesterday's prints sitting around doing nothing, I wanted to sew some up to get a feel for how the designs I'd done were working. The designs I did were too large for pouches but were perfect for a cushion.

And because the designs were A4 they looked best for a 30 x 40cm cushion.

I love how they've come up. There are possibly a couple of tweaks here and there that I want to do in the design, but on the whole, considering they are my first proper real screen-printed produced item, I am over the moon.

Having now done these, it has really helped order my mind in what I want to produce and keeping things cohesive. I'm going to slow right down (yeah, yeah, heard it all before) and keep things simple.

In the meantime, these first original one of a kind screen printed cushions are right here...

Today was the last day of my Screen Printing Course. Ordinarily it would be sad at the thought of a course being over, but not this one. Having completed the course I am now able to screen print whenever I want. You can not believe how much joy this is giving me (although if you've been reading my posts on screen printing over the last few weeks, you've probably got a pretty good idea).

I was a little bit nervous about this week's lesson. Remember my disasters of last week? And then everyone was telling me how much harder it is to print on fabric. Printing on fabric is obviously my main raison d'être for screen printing and if I'm having problems before I even get to the fabric stage, what chances do I have of succeeding?

Needless to say, all worries and concerns immediately evaporated as soon as I got going. Maybe it was the anticipation of disaster. Maybe it was the fact that I knew i needed full concentration today. Maybe it was the fact that some of the processes (making screen, printing technique) were becoming a bit more natural, leaving me able to concentrate on today's new aspect.

I'm not going to worry too much about what made it feel right, but enjoy the fact that it did.

I brought with a variety of fabrics to get a feel for how printing worked on the different textures. I wasn't sure I'd make a good print on linen, being causer and less smooth than cotton, but the linen I'm using at the moment is fairly close weaved, so this didn't seem to be as problematic as I'd envisaged.

The shirting worked a treat. It's very smooth and takes the ink beautifully. I'll be using these fabrics quite a bit.

The Klona cottons worked a treat too. I'm going to need to play around with colours however as even thought the pale blue took beautifully on the brown, the pink came out a little bit murky. Whereas on the white the pink was lovely and vivid.

I chose designs today that I could experiment various styles to see how they come out on the fabric. I wanted to play around with the font stamps I have, so included both of those. I also wanted to see how intricate detailing would show.

I think because I had such little expectations today, the results have thrilled me even more. I'm learning what works and what needs changing. I've booked to go in again on Monday and looking forward to playing around and experimenting some more and then, my friends, I'll start to get my mind ordered as to producing pieces that will actually be used.

This is just the beginning...