The winner

of my little giveaway is Rosemary. I used the random number generator and tried to post the result here but failed miserably. I could ask Jason but I don't want an hour long lesson - lol ! I am waiting for Rosemary's address and then the book and quilt top will be away across the water. Thanks to all who entered anyway.

And it seems I have managed to lay myself up with a slipped disc in my lower back. Ouch - very painful. It seems to be improving slightly but I understand these things take time. Very inconvenient I must say. I have lots I want to do - incuding finishing painting my hallway. Will have to wait.

The first couple of days the pain was excruciating and I was sent to bed. I am now at the pottering around stage but machine sewing is a no-no !

So when the pain gets bad and I need to rest I have been basting shapes for my 3D hexie quilt. This is the second one I'm making.

My first was a charm quilt but this one is in a limited colourway of green/purple/brown. All 577 shapes and ready to sew and I couldn't resist sewing a few together.

I must say I'm not loving this really but will carry on seeing as I've done so much already. Once the shapes are basting they go together quite quickly. It's very subdued - not as colourful as the photo shows. We'll see . .

I also started a crochet blanket to do when the mood strikes - nothing fancy - just going round and round in stripes. This is good to do when my back is hurting as I can work on it whilst lying alnost horizontally - needs must - lol !

Off to pop a few pills :-) take care xx

It's time . . . .

. . . . for a little giveaway. It is 3 years since I started my blog and now I couldn't imagine life without it. I have had so much fun and met some lovely people. You all know the feeling I'm sure. So now it's time to give a little back. I don't always have time to answer every comment but each and every one are much appreciated and that goes for those who pop in and read what I've been up to but don't have time to comment. Personally I read tons of blogs and honestly couldn't comment every time.

Anyway like a lot of you I am trying to stash bust and I'm doing okay ( apart from my little blip last week but we won't talk about that - lol ! ) But I have been buying books. I've bought Jennifer Chiaverini's The Lost Quilter - Kaffe Fassetts Simple Shapes, Spectacular Quilts and this one

What a lovely book. Obviously it appeals to me ( my blog name is a bit of a clue ) as I am Welsh and I make quilts - lol ! In fact I loved it so much I bought another one for my blog-birthday. It has lots of history and pictures of Welsh quilts and also contains instructions for making your own Welsh-style quilt. One of these in particular caught my eye. A very simple design which when quilted in the Welsh style looks gorgeous. There are many quilting designs and motifs in this book. So part 2 of my giveaway is this quilt top

made by me this weekend and just ready for some lovely quilting. I plan to make another for myself and love the idea that there will be two of these in the world made by yours truly. It measures 24 inches square and is yours for the taking. A Welsh quilt of your own ! This is a typical example - very simple piecing but then brought to life with beautiful hand-quilting.

So if you would like to win both the book and the quilt top you know what to do. Leave me a comment and I will pick a random number a week from now - Sunday 30th May - 8pm UK time.

A couple of things - if you are set as no-reply ( I get lots of lovely comments I am unable to respond to ) could you include your email address in the comment. And I would prefer this to go to one of my regular readers so please don't advertise this on your blog.

Good luck XXX

Sunglasses on !

My scrap quilt is done - right to a finish. Hurray ! I didn't want another UFO lurking about - I have far too many of them already. I started appliqueing them circles onto a nice cream background fabric but after doing 5 of them realised it wasn't doing it for me. Years ago I bought a sample pack from Ebay of a sort of shaded spotty stuff. Each piece went from light to dark of a certain colour and had a gold spot printed on. Every so often I would try to use a bit of this but it never seemed to work. Anyway I dug out the pack and just cut it up and began putting my circles on this instead - much better.

A quadruple strippy border went on too.

These photos should click - much brighter in real life and used up a load of strings.

I wanted a nice bright blue binding for this but didn't have enough of anything right. A little trip to Abakhan Fabrics was called for. I got my blue but hadn't planned to buy another 17.5 yards of other fabrics but that's what happened - lol !

When Patricks friends come for a sleepover they tend to doss down in the living room as it is much bigger than his bedroom. This quilt will be just right as an extra for his 13 yo mates to sleep under. Patrick is interested in Aliens and unexplained occurences such as crop circles so in Patricks honour this will be called Crap Circles - really I need to get a life - lol ! My family think I'm crackers :-)

As soon as it was done one of my 3 cats made a beeline for it and slept on it for hours. Thumbs up from Kasper.

I am coming up to my 3 year blog-birthday and have a little something planned.

Take care xx

My latest scrap quilt !

As I explained a few posts ago my box full of strings was packed to bursting so I decided to do something with them. Instead of just diving in and sewing them altogether willy-nilly I wanted to do something more structured.

I ironed them all and cut them in uniform strips of 1.25 inch roughly 6 inches long. Once that was done I started sewing them into these.

Soon I had a pile like this.

Then I got a small pasta bowl I have and drew round it onto some fusible web.

And made 1 of these.

I cut out the middles of the fusible ( bondaweb ) to cut out the stiffness a bit. Here is a pile ready to be used.

I am not in the process of appliquing them by machine onto background fabric. My machine has been whizzing like mad - lol !

I am determined to get this done completely before I start anything new. Binding and all.

Next on the agenda is a baby quilt I need to make for Jess's college tutor. I know what I am doing for that thanks to Norma and Linda - because the baby is not born yet and they haven't found out if it's a boy or a girl I am thinking of doing 1 for each - the other will be kept til another baby comes along. But I want to get this done first.

Big day for us here in UK today - General Election - will we have a new Prime Minister tomorrow ?

Take care xx