Needlecase swap

A little while ago I joined a Yahoo group organised by Kathleen Tracy. She is the owner of several lovely books dedicated to making small quilts. Just as I joined there was the starting up of a needlecase swap and of course I signed up. My partner was Donna ( no blog ) and this is what I received.

And here it is opened up showing all the lovely pockets.

Donna told me she was quite a new quilter and was a little nervous about doing this but as you can see she had no need to worry as it is just brilliant. It is in use already as I took it to a workshop last week with all my bits and bobs in it. Thanks Donna. She also included some little extras - scissors, needles and fabric but I don't have a photo for some reason.

Anyway here is what I sent to Donna.

She requested modern fabrics which stumped me a little as I don't really do trendy stuff but anyway this is what I came up with. I tried to do modern with traditional and so turned to paper pieced hexagons and then hand quilted it.

Here it is inside.

I also chucked in some extra pieces of the fabrics I'd used for Donna to do with what she liked.

This was a nice swap - no pressure and I've also made a new friend as Donna is a lovely lady and we are keeping in touch.

Thanks for all your encouraging comments on my last post. I just don't seem to be able to get time to reply and that makes me feel a bit guilty. My DD is quite poorly at the moment and I am a bit side-tracked I suppose. Hopefully she is on the mend now - fingers crossed xxx

A few finishes

My poor neglected blog - lol ! The more I thought to update the busier I seemed to become and my blog suffered. I am going to try my best this next week to get up to date and see how I go. I must admit I have toyed with the idea of finishing blogging - I am into my fifth year now - and just don't seem to have the enthusiasm I once had for it. For now I am going to carry on and have a think about it.

Anyway here is my cross stitch picture all finished.

And here it is after having it professionally framed. I haven't done a lot of cross stitch really so I am beyond thrilled with how it's turned out. This photo looks a bit light - the top one is truer.


It is called Midnight Moggies and was great fun to stitch. You may know I am a cat lover and have 3 real fur babies of my own. I have a spot on the wall lined up for this - just need some bits for fixing as it weighs a lot and is quite big. I think it took the best part of a year on and off but I'm glad I perservered. My last big cross stitch took about 10 years so a definite improvement - lol.

Next up my Mum asked me to make a baby quilt for a neighbour's grand-daughter. With no plan in mind I raided my pink fabrics along with a bit of green and cut some rectangles. Which I turned into this ( or rather 3 of them )




Added some white as the pink was just too MUCH pink ! And hey presto

A shot of my very boring machine quilting - the usual meander and swirly stuff in the sashing. I really enjoyed doing this braid design - grows like mad and before you know it you have a huge long strip. Good fun !

Onto baby quilt number 2. I wanted to use this as I've never had one before.



Bit fiddly cutting all the odd size strips equally but after adding a few of my own fabrics it came out like this.

Awful photo I know - think I need a new camera as mine is old now.

Close-up of some of the cute fabrics. Lollipop by Moda. Really simple straight line quilting on this one. I also discovered when working on this that I far prefer to sew with pre-washed fabric. The first thing I normally do when I buy fabric is wash it but I know many of you don't. Personally I don't really like cutting and sewing the unwashed stuff. Just my preference.




I have a few more things to show but blogger seems to be playing up a little. I'll just show you what I spent a couple of hours doing yesterday.




Removing papers and tacking from a whole quilt that I want to get ready for hand-quilting. Going to piece the backing over the weekend and get going on that next week.

have a nice weekend - we are supposed to have glorious sunshine xx