Our new Dashwood Studio Playtime themed window display

I've got a lovely new window display to share with you this week! Featuring the brand new 'Playtime' collection from Dashwood studios, we've got fun home interiors and quilting projects and well as gorgeous garments on show.

The days are starting to get a bit longer now here in Birmingham and we are loving the light flooding in through the window!

To see a full tour and get ideas and tips of using the fabrics in the collection to make fun new projects, check out my latest Youtube video!

The Dashwood Studio Play time collection

This fun collection is on medium weight quilting cotton and features two panels, one with an alphabet design to make a quilt and the other with several elements that can be used to make lots of projects from simple cushion covers to soft toys, wall hangings and quilt panels.

We also have three co-ordinating fabrics that can be used for the backing of a quilt, binding or making patchwork panels.

I used most of the elements in the panel to make simple envelope cushion covers and a fun soft toy elephant and pear.

The size of the panels, when made into a cushion cover, I found were a non standard size. For some I managed to repurpose old cushion pads by fluffing them up and squeezing them in and for the elephant and pear shape I used toy stuffing to fill them up. You might want to consider making your own cushion pad using some of our flame retardant fabric along with either some toy stuffing or by repurposing some old cushion pads you already have at home.

With the rainbow section I made it into a quilted wall hanging. I layered it up with wadding and a simple plain lining backing fabric before quilting through these layers. I simply followed the lines of the rainbow using the sewing but you got go an extra step and do some nice hand embroidered stitches that co-ordinated with the colours of the rainbow instead.

I made some tassels to hang along the bottom using some scrap yarn I had. It's super easy and I show you how to do it in my latest Youtube video lined above.

The alphabet quilt panel is such a lovely design, where each of the letters are made into a different animal. I used some of our warm and natural cotton wadding and the co-ordinating shapes fabric for the backing and the binding. As the rectangular outline of each letter panel doesn't fit into coloumns and rows, instead I quilted the horizontal lines with the walking foot and then used my free machine embroidery foot to go around elements of each animal/letter.

Find out more tips on how to do this in my Youtube video linked above and check out my separate post on making a 'cheats patchwork quilt' (linked below) where I explain how to use a similar panel to quickly and easily make a quilt and finish it off neatly with handmade binding in your matching fabric.

To make the quilt using the panel you will need

• one panel
• 1.2m of backing fabric
• 0.5m of fabric for the binding (this can be in the same fabric as the backing or a different one)
• 1.2m of wadding (I used warm and natural cotton wadding, but we also sell a polyester cheaper alternative)

The garments