I feel I should offer some apologies to anyone who isn’t that keen on gardening, if you’ve still stuck with this blog long enough to read this post, for I realise it’s been a bit plant heavy round here these past few weeks.

Whenever I’ve put my head above ground from revising for my horticulture exams (I totally made that sound like I was doing loads and loads of work, when in reality, I’m pleased if I manage to do 30 mins a day when the baby is napping, but still…) I pop outside and water my actual garden.

So plants and all things plant-related have been taking up a lot of my brain space recently. And blog space too.

Not so much on the whole fabric or crafting front recently, I know.

So, I was all excited to sit down and write this post to share something I actually managed to create the other day and then I realised…. …it’s still got quite a horticultural bent to it.

Ah well.

I made this tomato garland for a friend’s daughter’s first birthday. Unfortunately, true to type, I’ve finished it three months after the birthday but, hey, at least it’s finished.

She is a big fan of tomatoes (or was three months ago, anyway), so I thought it might be fun to make her a garland for her bedroom, to go with the T-shirts I printed at the time.

Now I look at it, I rather think this is quite the weirdest idea for a present I’ve ever had. A garland. Of tomatoes. Hmmmm.

Still, it will be wrapped up, stamped and posted to Ireland nonetheless. Hopefully before her second birthday.

This was my second attempt at making it. (I know! I actually sat down and thought it was a good idea to make a second one!)

For the first attempt, I ironed the tomatoes onto a big expanse of fabric first (I showed you a sneak peek of that some many months ago) and then cut them out and sewed them into the circles. The trouble with that, was the ironed-on tomato pictures got really creased and crumpled in the turning out process and you can’t iron over them again so there was no way to fix it.

They looked so tatty, I thought I had better start again, and the second time round I made the circles fully first, then ironed the tomato pictures onto the front of each circle, just before stuffing.

I also stitched them onto the ribbon too far apart, as you can see from the gigantic loop between these two tomatoes:

But by the time I’d sewn it all up for the second time, I just didn’t have the energy to take them off and do it again. I’ll just have to hope they don’t mind the tomatoes taking over the entire room…

Though I still think a tomato garland was a bit of a weird one, I could see this working quite well with some other images. Little gingerbread houses, perhaps, or circus animals, maybe some sharks for my partner, or horses for my horse-obsessed three-year-old friend. Many, many possibilities. Yet another project to add to the endless “To make” list!

Related articles:

• I’m really just starting out with the whole sewing malarkey, but you can take a look at other things I’ve made by checking out some other posts in my sewing category
• And if you’re not put off by all the plant chat, then there’s my Garden Moodboard for June or some nice vintage horticultural images