The World`s Postal System In Harmony

This is my 298th post and I have over 300 followers.  Surely we need to have a giveaway soon!

The postman returned yesterday.

Fabric enabler Di, or Super-Di, who lives in sunny Southern California offered to pick up some Denyse Schmidt fabrics and send them to me.  I said yes please, she did and they arrived! Thanks Di!

If you don`t know Di`s blog you should.  Hop over and say hi.  There is eye candy of all kinds over there. I only wish she was able to come to the retreat in June.
 
There were also X and Plus blocks from Kat and Kris in Australia for the Care Circle of do.Good Stitches.  There are 11 people in the Care Circle. These blocks are contributions from 4 of us. So we are well on the way to making a big quilt or 2 smaller ones. This quilt will be given to the Siblings Together charity, which you can read about here. Here`s a group photo of the new blocks with mine and Cindy`s.  They look very happy together!

A few weeks ago, an incredibly generous woman called Jennifer (Bessiemae on flikr) put a whole load of fabric stacks on flikr, which she was prepared to post anywhere in the world to people who had the time to make quilts but perhaps not the stash.  I quickly snapped up this pink and orange bundle and it finally arrived.  Thank you so much Jennifer for your amazing generosity! It will hopefully be backed with some fabric which is winging its way from another incredibly generous person, Katy!

I am responsible for piecing another Katy`s quilt in the round robin bee, Stitch Tease and she sent me her starter blocks, which are just so cool. Katy is after blocks which replicate the vehicles in her chosen fabric in yellows, teals, oranges and grey.

Katy`s block for the Stitch Tease bee

Katy`s block for the Stitch Tease Bee

How I`m going to do that in batiks and Civil War fabrics, I`ll never know!
Katy lives in Glasgow where my mum`s side of the family come from.  Knowing my love of Highland Toffee but unable to find any, Katy sent me some tablet and Edinburgh rock.  Tastes of my childhood.  As I said in an email to Katy last night, having teeth is seriously overrated. I couldn`t include the sweeties for technical reasons.  Uh em.

My winnings from Kati (yes, another one) arrived - These gorgeous cards based on Kati`s designs.

...and I whipped up this little Curious Nature pochette for a friend.  Why is it that one end is okay and the other is squishy?  Is there a sewing law that I`m unaware of?

Front

Thank you for all your suggestions for the Curious Nature stained quilt - I think I`m leaning towards a mustard colour for the binding at the moment...

Fake it `til You Make It

That expression will be written on my tombstone no doubt.  Throughout life I`ve often found myself in situations where I`ve had to convince others that I know far more about something than I actually do!

As I`ve mentioned before, a couple of weeks ago I signed up for the Mouthy Stitches swap hosted by the lovelies, Susan, Hadley and Cindy.  It`s a zippered pouch swap.  Suffering from FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), I immediately signed up after receiving an early alarm call from Hadley to do so.  Bleary eyed, I headed over to `hers` and the rest is as they say, history.

The slight fly in the ointment was that I had never actually made a zippered pouch before.  I had put numerous zips in clothes (in my teens) but a pouch of the zippered variety was new territory.

Until today, that is.  I made what will be doubtless one of many practice pouches in the warm colourway of Lotta Jansdotter`s Echo. Not perfect by any means but it`s a pouch (well a wristlet to be exact) and there is a zip in it. Once I decide on a zip colour for my swap partner`s pouch, I need to get some coordinating thread - I don`t like the effect of the white thread on the yellow zip.

As I was making the patchwork panels (the front and back are mirror images of each other), it dawned on me how much brown was in the warm tones of the Echo prints, and I recalled a flikr discussion about how many people hated brown!  I wouldn`t necessarily want a brown quilt but I`ve always quite liked brown accessories.

The wristlet is quite capacious and holds all the essentials and will be handy for running to the shops or gym (ah, yes, I remember the gym...vaguely).

I used Ayumi`s tutorial here.  If I was to say it was plain sailing, then I would be lying.  The seam ripper did come out once or twice but it wasn`t so bad. Nothing to do with the instructions, which are excellent but my incompetence in following them. Now I need to try a pouch with covered end tabs.

There is awesome talent in this swap.  I have been assigned my partner and I know her to be super sweet.  I`m just hoping she is of a forgiving nature.  Just in case.

In the last week, I was overwhelmed to be asked to participate in a couple of really exciting things coming up soon.  They are a little hush hush at the moment but as soon as I receive the nod, you`ll be the first to know.  It`s also my blogaversary in a couple of days, so be sure to come back.  Just saying.