Giving and receiving

I was deligted to recieve a squishy in the post today from Anne. Turns out Anne is my Booty swap partner and she made me this beautiful quilt.



I hung it up before I realised I needed to take a photo LOL. It's wonderful: beautifully quilted, gorgeous colours and plaids and of course hearts! Thank you Anne.

Thanks also to The Quilting Pirate, who is the host of the Miniature Booty Swap and also a wonderful bloggy friend.
Toni knew I had been yearning for the rulers Bonnie Hunter suggests for her mystery quilts and she was kind enough to buy them for me.



Yesterday they arrived with a beautiful block made by Toni in wonderful colours (and African Amafu fabric) as well as some Civil War fabrics. Toni is solely responsible for my small collection of Civil War fabrics. Thanks Toni!!


I have finished my bag for Linda's bag swap...

And the inside...

I'll mail that out asap and then I can concentrate on my slightly (er um!) late Booty quilt.

DH drew the winners for the African scraps. They are Siobahn a.k.a Yankee Quilter and Julie
Please send me your snail mail addresses and I'll pop them in the mail asap.

Not a single shop!

We have just returned from a wonderful, yet exhausting, trip to London, surely one of the greatest shopping capitals of the world :-) and I wasn't 'allowed' in a single shop! Considering this restriction, I have returned with quite a haul! I was incredibly touched at friends remembering how 'patchworky' I am.

First up, we stayed with amazing friends who really were the most welcoming, generous and incredible hosts to DH, myself and two noisy, messy, very excited little boys. They directed us to the sights (i.e. how to get to the Aquarium, local parks and coffee shops etc...), they put on meals, provided stunning accommodation and just basically made us feel so at home. This is really something when you are travelling with two very small boys who mess their food, put sticky handprints everywhere and wake up very noisily at sparrow's fart.



Our hosts had a BBQ on the Sunday and one of DH's friends came bearing a plastic carrier bag. He said that he had remembered me admiring his shirt once (for chopping up and patchworking LOL) and so here it was!



I was gobsmacked, how cool is that? Thanks Mark, I am really touched.

When I delivered the wedding quilt (pictured on the fence in the last post) Helen gave me some fabrics she'd bought for me on a trip to India (some time ago).



Aren't they gorgeous..? Thank you Helen (hope you and Kieran enjoy your quilt).



Then I finally met Kate!



We have been trying to meet for ages, but something always seems to come up (for me!). Anyway we had a grand day out first at the Natural History Museum viewing dinosaurs and mammals and then at the most amazing park with a pirate ship (and great ice creams!)

DS1 enjoyed the mammals with Sarah,




But sadly, DS2 slept through it! (all that running around and the scary dinosaurs LOL)

Kate and her lovely family were such fun and spoilt the boys with a shark for DS1 and a dinosaur for DS2. Both toys have been very popular! Kate gave me this absolutely lovely 'Africat' mini



and a tie-dye t-shirt which came in most handy on the last day as I'd not packed enough clothing for myself LOL.



Thanks Kate.

Sadly, my camera stopped working while we were away so I have had to find an old camera to take some photos of the contents of my suitcase which included another wonderful cotton shirt from our host and some fabric from our hostess some of which will be made into a bag for her, some cool beads and a wheat-free recipe book.


Thanks Paul & Emma, we had a great time!!

And look what else was on the camera! 2 pictures from 2006!!



He was 8 days old! And here he is with his BlockBuddy's quilt.



Doesn't the time just fly!!!

Progress report

After another tidy up where the house is still nowhere near where it needs to be, I rewarded myself with some sewing... not much sewing, BUT I have almost finished my bag for Linda's bag swap and I have worked on my Booty swap as well as making my blocks for Aryn's quilt organised by Alison for Kid’s Quilts...


These were mailed this afternoon.

Here are some sneak peaks of the swap stuff...
Mmm... a bag perhaps? We'll see...



And what's this? It's awfully small....



Now it's packing and more cleaning and tidying in preparation for a very mini-break to London tomorrow where I will be delivering this...



Photos taken on our first sunny day in a looooong time!



With a label!


Oh, and here's the dratted trophy LOL.




And the article in the village paper...



3 of us (as in my family) made it in to the photo in the paper, except for DS1 who was hiding under a table!!! That boy is going to be the gray hairs of me!!!

I am not quite sure what to do with it. I have never won a trophy before and would quite frankly like to return it before I lose it LOL, but I guess it will have to sit around here and collect dust until next year!!

Here's the painting...


It's a bit blurry, but I struggled to get a shot as it has a plastic mount cover...
I did it while at college. It's titled: 'My dad was an electrical man'. Quite sentimental to me. Everything about my Dad tugs at my heart. We lost him when I was 12. Anyway I'm sure he would've been proud.(not of my dust though LOL)

When I come back I am going to clear out my sewing space and give some bits away so I hope there will be lots of homes out there... in fact I found ANOTHER bag of assorted African fabric scraps which I would love to giveaway.



There are scraps of all sorts of sizes and qualities and quite a lot so perhaps I should divide them into 2 bags... just leave a comment if you would like them and I'll draw 2 names on the 30th of August.

August Bag and more bashing...

Here's my BQL Bag Challenge for August. It's a sort of clutch bag that can either be used for an evening out or some have said it's a good size for a rotary cutter! (This would have to be a posh rotary cutter! LOL)



As I have not been sewing much lately due to general unignorable fatigue, I was quite pleased to get this done in time to see the September sneaky peek which looks great.

He's still bashing... And we have new (unwelcome by me) 'ventilation' in our kitchen...



But it will be good! (I keep saying!!)



In the meantime I have prepared some labels following Juliann's example and label challenge. I am a notoriously bad labeller and have given away loads of quilts (ALL unlabeled! I know I should be ashamed, but I am turning over a new leaf!) Thanks to Toni (The Quilting Pirate) for selling me some labels, I have started in earnest. 2 quilts have already been labeled and delivered to go in the GNQS and 2 more are awaiting labels. One being a present for friends which I can't show (just yet) and the other the quilt from Anne. I'm going to be putting a hanging sleeve on it shortly so thought I might as well label it at the same time...



I had to pick up my trophy this week so perhaps I'll show it and the painting in my next post... (or perhaps not! :-) LOL!)

I'm not complaining!

I won! I won big time on Vicki's blog. Vicki W made some cute Monkey quilts with this great monkey fabric and then offered the scraps as a giveaway. Well, I like scraps! So I entered and gosh and golly I hit the jackpot. Vicki not only included her fuzzy cut scraps but also loads of FQ's of monkey fabric left over from her Monkey quilt...



And it's all gorgeous! Now, what shall I make????

Vicki also included one of her fabulous tie-dye t-shirts that I had my beady little eye on...



Thank you Vicki!
Admittely I am a sucker for hearts, but I LOVE it!! I reckon she should give up her job and make these t-shirts, they are superb!! (I couldn't get DH to take my photo because he's too busy bashing...)

What it looked like before I went out this afternoon...



And when I came back...



I'm not complaining, every bash is one bash closer to having a nicer house! (However I do have holes in my kitchen - photos to follow... if I can bear it LOL)

Scraps? Yes, please!

Erm, well that's what I always say, but when I went to tidy my sewing room I noticed that I was becoming a scrap collector LOL! 'Grumps' put a curtain rail up in the spare room where I have a temporary sewing space and to enable him to get to the window, I had to move my sewing table which I have now admitted was far too large for the space. So large in fact that I could hardly sew at it. Sounds crazy, but it allowed almost no space for a chair in front of it before meeting the bed. Sooooo, the table has come out, I've had a little tidy and I have reduced 2 bags of African scraps into...



55 (untrimmed) string blocks and half a bag of almost useless crumbs which I will probably just send to DS1's nursery. One of the bags came from an SA friend and I have had them for ages, the other bag was scraps from blocks I've made. Oh, it's good to use scraps!!!

DH allowed me to sew in the lounge for 2 nights. I got to watch tv and just sew, sew, sew. I'm thinking of doubling the blocks by adding a black HST to each...



But at least now they are more usable in this form.



I have a few swaps to attend to and then I plan to attack another box of scraps! Those string blocks are fun and make up really fast.


On the T-shirt front, the "mom' phoned to say that twins loved their gifts and DH said he saw one of my dinosaur t-shirts at kids tennis coaching that afternoon.


Of course you can never get kids to pose...



However, he did wear his for 2 days so I'll definitely make some more soon... keep your eyes peeled, because if I get really good, I'll put some in my shop :-) or you can custom order one [sewkalico at yahoo dot co dot uk]

The winner takes the fall

I have been meaning to blog the results of the Village Show, but I forgot ot take my camera to the show and somehow I've just been feeling really weird about the whole event...

I won 'Best Exhibit in Show' and a trophy which is currently being engraved with my name.



But not for my pie...



which came second out of 2!

And not for Ted, or my pincushions, or my knitting (which came 2nd again out of 2!) or my bag (which came 3rd!). No, I won 'best in show' for a painting! And another 'First' for a drawing!!

My little boy won a few prizes for his paintings too!


This has sent me into a little bit of self-doubt about my creativity and whether I should be sewing at all... Obvioulsy having a 'sewing room' and lots of fabric adds an extra guilt factor to any doubt I may have.

I bought myself a sketch book and some fabric paints yesterday (to cheer myself up) and thought wouldn't it be nice if I could combine my interests?


(the boys chose the stencils BTW! - I prefer free hand painting)

So I made these t-shirts for a birthday party for twin boys we're going to tomorrow..


Hope the recipients like them...

If not, my boys do!

Garden Friends

I found some more entries for the Village show today - in the garden...

There's a pincushion section so I made LadyB:



And there's a section for handicraft not mentioned in any other section...
Ted has volunteered to go for me:


I made Ted quite some time ago, when I was recovering from a second bout of corrective surgery on my femur.

I broke my femur when I had a bicycle accident in Germany. An unsuccessful surgical procedure by an inexperienced doctor left me with a shorter, oddly angled leg! I had to wait 6 months after the initial botched surgery for the leg to be unpinned, the knee had to be operated on at the same time to correct the angle. 18 months later the knee plate was removed and the leg was lengthened at the top of the femur. After that second operation I spent some weeks recuperating at an othopaedic rehabilitation centre in in the Black Forest in Germany. My days were filled with physio, swimming, massage for pain relief etc and in the evenings you could do craft. I signed up for Teddy Bear making. I made Ted and then when I went home I made another bear for my friend's daughter, Skye. After that I made 2 more and then that was it... no more bears :-(

Kerry who gives teddy bear classes asked me to show Ted, and this week was quite fitting to remember making him as I saw a specialist yesterday about trying to relieve some of the pain I still feel in my leg. We shall see how things progress on that...


BTW My pie has just come out of the oven for tomorrow, I went a little OTT decorating it LOL - nerves I tell you!!