Parcel in the Mail from England!

When we got home from our weekend away, the first thing I noticed was a parcel in the mailbox...It was my charm pack and goodies from Jane in England. I had won a give-away on her blog which celebrated the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

The parcel contained the promised red, blue and neutral charm pack along with a box of tea, a bar of Belgian chocolate (long gone now!) and a crocheted flower pin. I am sitting at my kitchen table admiring the charm pack and thinking of ideas...  Thanks, Jane, for the wonderful parcel!

As you can see below, our weekend vacation included a little sewing in the car. Christine and I each did the hand sewing on a quilt--both were recent finishes by Christine.

I worked on her 30's Spin quilt .

Christine worked on a tumbler quilt.  She now has two quilts for show and tell at the London Friendship Quilters' Guild meeting later this week!

We visited three quilt stores on the weekend.  Of course, I did a little stash enhancement...

We Have a Winner!

This morning, I put all the names into a hat and my husband picked the winner!

Linda at lrdesignsquilting! I have already sent Linda an email to let her know that she has won "37 Sketches".  We will all be watching your blog, Linda, to see if you decide to make a "sketch".


I did some sewing this week and hope to do a blogpost soon.

Give-away! "37 Sketches" by Gwen Marston

As you know, Christine, Carol and I recently went to Gwen Marston's "Beaver Island Quilt Retreat" at White Birch Lodge in Elk Rapids, Michigan. You can see my previous posts about the retreat here. We had a wonderful time and I am still "basking in the afterglow" of my 5 days of sewing non-stop!

While at the retreat, I purchased a copy of Gwen's latest book, "37 Sketches".  I have read it and re-read it several times and everytime, I am inspired by Gwen's colour combinations, use of shapes and small pieces that I never would have tried before attending the workshop.

Here is what Gwen has to say about her book:

"37 Sketches is both an artfully designed and beautifully made book. It shows my new work built on the idea of exploring the elements of design by constructing small studies, which I quickly began to think of as sketches. I began to see these sketches in much the same way as a painter does in using sketches to explore technique and to work out color and composition ideas. These pieces are abstract compositions, worked primarily in solids. Constructing these 37 sketches provided me with a valuable and expedient way to explore new technique, color, and composition. I explain my process for making these small studies using my liberated, improvisational methods, of which many of you are very familiar, and discuss how the experience of making this series of sketches was like taking a crash course in design."

Gwen showed off her book at the "Show and Tell" evening during the retreat. She explained the process of making the book, picking the paper, the binding, taking the pictures, etc. She is rightfully very proud of her book!

It contains pictures of each of her 37 sketches as well as detail shots and short descriptions of each sketch and the inspirations behind them.



Gwen's sketches will be on display at the Taupo Museum in Taupo, New Zealand in July of 2013. She will also be teaching at the National Quilt Symposium in Taupo.

Now, the give-away!  If you would like to win an autographed copy of "37 Sketches", please leave a comment on this post by Friday, November 25th, at 7pm (Eastern Standard Time). I will draw a name out of a hat at that time and will contact the winner by e-mail so make sure I know how to get in touch with you!

If you would like to purchase a copy "37 Sketches", you can do that here. I am sure that Gwen would be happy to sign your book for you! This book would make a great Christmas gift!

We have a winner!

Congratulations to Andee in Arizona!  She is the winner of one of my fabric postcards!  I have already sent Andee an e-mail to let her know that she won and hope to hear from her soon so I can get it into the mail for her!

I am making slow but steady progress on my Blue Ridge Beauty quilt. I will post a picture of the flimsy as soon as it is done.

And the winner is....POKEY!

I just sent an e-mail to Pokey in California to let her know that she won my Pumpkin Wall-hanging give away. We went shopping at Ikea this past weekend and I used my daughter's new utensil holder for my draw.
Congratulations, Pokey! I will put your wall hanging in the mail as soon as I know your address!

Almost 30,000 visits--Time for a Give-Away!

My counter is approaching 30,000 visits and I have not done a give-away for quite a while. This week, I made this pumpkin wall hanging which needs a home. If you would like that home to be your home, please comment on this post. I will draw a name out of a hat on Wednesday, August 4th, 2010 in the afternoon. Let me know what you are working on at the moment. Is there anyone else out there working on something for the Fall?

Thanks for stopping by to check out my blog!

Happy quilting!

Row Robin and Carolina Christmas -step 4 done

The London Friendship Quilters' Guild did a Row Robin this year. This is the last row that I made for someone else in my group of 4 quilters. The theme of Edith's quilt is Transportation. It is a quilt for a child. Everyone else in our group had covered all of the transportation modes except flying. It took me a while to find appropriate pictures to use for my row and I am a little late getting it done--but it is done now. Now, I just have to get all of the rows back to Edith... I hope she likes the row I made for her quilt.

Christine and I got together yesterday afternoon to work on Step 4 of Carolina Christmas. We both made great progress at completing this step as we sewed yesterday afternoon. I finished off all of my step 4 broken dishes units (104 of them!) this morning. Here they are:

Christine and I will not be able to get together for the next couple of weeks as both of us are busy. We get to start putting the blocks together next! Here are all of the step 1-4 units I have completed:
We have spent many hours sewing and we are both excited to see how the blocks look!

I am working on another project--a give-away to celebrate 30,000 visits to my blog. I will post details shortly.

In the Mail tomorrow!!!

Creative Hands won my 20,000 visits give-away a couple of weeks ago. Today, I had a snow day and I finally had time to make her candle mat. I thought a fellow quilter would like a sewing themed candle mat. I will be putting this in the mail tomorrow. I hope Creative Hands has a good place in her sewing room to put her prize! More sewing is on deck for tomorrow. Tonight, I put labels on this candle mat and on the Charity quilt in a previous post. The Canadian Women's curling team won the silver medal!

I will be watching the men's game this weekend too.

We have a WINNER!

My daughter is home from University for Reading Week--and she is actually doing homework (while watching the Olympics and cheering for Canada, of course!). She agreed to help me to the draw for the give-away this afternoon.

In the Olympic spirit, I decided to use one of my Vancouver 2010 Olympic mittens instead of a hat!
I put all of the names on little pieces of paper and then my daughter put them into the mitten...
She mixed them up....

And pulled out the winner: Creative Hands!

Congratulations! Please send my your snail mail address and I will finish off your candle mat and put it into the mail. Thanks everyone for reading my blog and entering my give-away!

Go CANADA!!!

Friendship Stars (fixed!) and Farmer's Fields

After a good night's sleep, I decided to fix the yellow friendship star so it matched the spinning direction of the pink one. I sewed these two blocks together already and like the way they look beside each other, both spinning in the same direction.


This morning, I made "Farmer's Fields". I have a limited supply of the light fabric in my fat quarter bundle so I decided to use pink for the background of this block. I am almost half way there now for this sampler quilt! Still a few challenging blocks coming up!

The next post will announce the winner of my give-away... Stay tuned. If my computer and my camera co-operate, I hope to get this done before 6:30 tonight.

Grateful Heart Sampler: Corn and Beans

Happy Valentine's Day!

I have now completed 9 of 25 blocks for this sampler quilt. We were away for a few days this past week on vacation. I ended up getting sick and we came home early. I am feeling a bit better today and decided to do a little sewing. I hope to make some more blocks for this quilt later this week. Tomorrow is a statutory holiday here: Family Day. My family will spend the day together watching the Olympics and I may do some sewing too.

Don't forget to post a comment on my blog before tomorrow to have a chance to win a candle mat! I will make the draw at noon (Eastern Standard Time).

Free Trade and Economy (and a Give-away!)

I spent the afternoon sewing. I made two more blocks for my Grateful Heart Sampler. The first is called "Free Trade".

The second is called "Economy". And you probably thought I was going to do a stimulating post about the current economic climate in this blog, judging from the title!!! I have completed 8 out of 25 blocks for this quilt.

I noticed on my counter that I am very close to 20,000 views of my blog! I think this should be celebrated with a give-away! On February 15th, I will put the names of all the people who have commented on the February posts on my blog into a hat and pick one to receive a candle mat. So... leave a comment and you will have a chance to win!!!

Surprises in the Mail

I usually try to put a quilted postcard in our Guild's monthly postcard exchange. Last week, I received this post card made by "The Quilt Rat". The snowmen are cut out from a Christmas card that she received in December! She always comes up with such creative ideas!!!
Yesterday, I received a parcel from Erin at My Patchwork Life. I had entered a give-away at her blog and I won two meters of this beautiful fabric called "Jane's Exotic Garden". I am not sure exactly what I am going to do with this gift yet...Any ideas out there???? Erin wrote me a wonderful note--she loves the idea of sending mail out of the country and wondering if the postal workers want to know how she knows the person she is sending the package to ... Erin and I have never met, but I think we would enjoy spending the day together, quilting, of course!!!

Post card Winner

I forgot to announce that the comic book lady is the winner of the post card give-away. Your post card is in the mail and should be arriving in your mailbox soon!

Fall Postcards

This afternoon, I made some fabric post cards with material leftover from the table runners that I made recently. One of them will be put into the mailbox at the London Friendship Quilters' guild meeting this week for our monthly post card exchange. I will receive a post card from another quilter a week or so after the meeting.

If you would like to receive one of these post cards in the mail, just leave a comment on this post. I will draw a name out of a hat on Monday night (October 5th, 2009) at 8 pm (EST). Good Luck!

Now, back to sewing...

Mel's prize

Mel won my recent 100th post giveaway and here are the things that I sent to her. She e-mailed to let me know that they have arrived so now I can show you the pictures. I tried to mail the postcard to her but it came back to me with a sticker on it saying that there was no postage on it. I know that I put a self-adhesive stamp on it so I think the stamp was taken off or fell off somewhere along the line. I will make sure I take my fabric post cards to the post office to be hand cancelled from now on when I mail them... I put a little dragonfly button on the loyalty card wallet in keeping with my garden fabric theme. I will have another give-away closer to the time when my counter gets to 10,000. Stay posted.

I picked up my daughter's university quilt from the machine quilter's last night so I will be working on the binding this week. I have started the baby quilt I cut out the other night but don't have any pictures yet. I also have to finish step two of the Bonnie Hunter Christmas Lights mystery quilt. There won't be a dull moment around here this week!

I think it is supposed to rain again tomorrow so perhaps I will get some sewing time in.

Fabric Postcards

I have not made any fabric postcards for ages so on the weekend, I decided to make a few from some leftover fabric from my "In My Garden" quilt. One of these postcards will be winging its way to Mel, the winner of my Post #100 give-away. One is for my aunt and one is for friends who will soon be celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary --they got married on the same day, same year as my husband and I. (We did not know them then!) I have another couple of postcards in progress. Also, there is going to be a QNIC (Quilting Night in Canada) later this week so there will be another post or two soon. Stay tuned...

Just in case you are interested, here is what is blooming in my garden today...