Blogger's Quilt Festival - Autumn 2013

In the Scrappy section I am entering this quilt:

I previously blogged about it here, here and here.

For those new,  it is entirely hand-pieced: not EEP, just shapes cut out and sewn together with a regular small running stitch.

I found the block on Quiltivate, printed it out to make a 10" block, made plastic templates from the print out , individually cut out each piece (and tried to fussy cut for most of the centres) and off I went.

It was my portable,hand-piecing project for most of the summer.

I hand quilted the majority of the quilt with perle cotton, just adding in some machine quilting in the dark triangles.

It gave it a really lovely texture.

It was one of those quilts that I was really sad to see the finish of. I could have gone on and on, hand-piecing a monstrosity of a quilt, such is my enjoyment of calm hand-piecing.

Thank you once again to Amy for putting on the Blogger's Quilt Festival - I'm off to see what everyone else has been up to now.

Drumroll please...

...and the winner of the fantabulous bag is:

 Which was:

Well done - I shall email you in a mo for address.

I'm sure you'll love your new bag as much as I love mine.

And thank you to everyone who entered and of course Anne-Marie for bag-making skills extraordinaire.

A Fantabulous Bag Giveaway

The giveaway is now closed

I bought a bag.

Not just any old bag.

A bag made especially for me with the Harris Tweed picked by me.

A bag made all the way on the Northern tip of the British Isles

The Isle of Lewis off the north west coast of Scotland

Sent all the way to me in the Southern most part of the British Isles

I definitely have an affinity for other island dwellers.

Anne Marie would love to make one of you a bag too. To enter, please visit her website and in your comment mention the name of the tweed you would like your bag made out of. It will be the smaller version of mine and you have an option of dark or light leather straps - I went for dark and I chose Cerise Check for the tweed fabric.

Followers leave a second comment mentioning what they ate for breakfast today.

I shall leave the giveaway open for one week and a winner will be picked by Random Number Generator next Wednesday about 8pm my time. Posting anywhere.

Good luck.

I think it's a fantabulous giveaway and I have to say - my bag is absolutely the bees knees.

Nutscene winners

And the two winners of the Nutscene twine packs are:

which was

And

which was

Enjoy - am looking forward to seeing what you make.

Lucky me. Lucky you?

Look what I got in the post.

It's my PIF (Pay It Forward) from the Queen of Rainbows, Kelly.
I'd already taken part in a PIF before so had mentally ticked it off the 'been there, done that' list. But when Kelly posted she was looking for three people to make something for, I was back in there quicker than a rat up a drainpipe.

And I'm so glad I did.

I saw it coming together on her blog but never thought it was for me.
And she even very, very kindly included the cushion form too.

So you know what's coming next?

I have to make something for three people and I have the next twelve months in which to do it.
In return, when I have made that 'something', those three people then have to make something for three people themselves and so on.

So is this going to be a tumbleweed post or does someone want me to make them something?

Speak now or forever hold your peace!

Edited to add: Now closed thank you.

A Giveaway (and it's not fabric)

Remember this?

Crocheting garden twine to make a bag?

Well I finished it.

My original inspiration came from here  but I decided to add in wooden handles instead and basically just made it a different shape.

Can I just say; as a crocheting newbie who didn't know one end of a crochet hook from the other until this project - it is so completely doable. Find yourself a Youtube video and suddenly all those weird abbreviations will make sense and off you go.

And I also want to say when I next go on holiday, I absolutely will not expect to pay next to nothing for some rustic holiday bag made by a local women's cooperative or such like. Nope, these things take time and skillz are involved. I have a renewed awareness of what it takes to make a bag.

I think it probably needs blocking like you'd block something knitted but I'm still thinking it out in my head: blocking garden twine...would it work?

The bag was made with garden twine from Nutscene. If you are looking for twine in funky colours this is where you should stop by. My local garden centre has garden twine in dark green only. Nutscene twines come in neon shades (like the pink I used) as well as pretty much any shade you can think of. You should read too why they are called Nutscene - very droll.

Fancy crocheting a garden twine bag yourself?

Nutscene have very kindly given me two variety packs of twine to give away. There's enough twine in there to crochet a bag and still have enough left over to tie up your husband toms.

If you'd like a chance to win one of the packs, then please leave a comment letting me know where you live - I always like to know.
And since the demise of Google Reader and because I am even more curious, followers can leave a second comment and tell me which reader they now use to follow blogs.

I'm happy to post anywhere in the world.
Giveaway will stay open until Monday 14 October 20.00 my time , after which Random Number Generator will work its magic.

Linking up to WIP Wednesday

It's hip to be square

Done.

A whole bunch of walking foot quilting either side of most of the seam lines.

And each individual features square got the Perle cotton treatment.

Am I really the last person out there who suddenly realised there was an easier way to thread Perle cotton on to a nice sharp needle?

And that all it took was a 'self-threading' needle where you slot the thread down into the eye through the top of the needle.

I can't believe I hadn't thought of that before.

Linking up to Finish It Up Friday

The instructions for how I made the block can be found in a previous post here