Unexpectedly productive (or, every cloud has a silver lining)

I had expected to get no sewing at all done today - so many errands to run and things to do at school, but Alex's "my tummy hurts" this morning actually turned into real illness (in the form of throwing up on mummy. sigh.) so we spent the day at home. He spent the morning watching telly, then lying on the floor playing with a toy plane and listening to music. He didn't really want company, so in between the washing (he threw up again on the sofa covers), I sewed. And sewed. And then after lunch, when he was a little more with it and wanted to play on the computer, I came downstairs and fused fabric...

The first thing I did was finish my postcards for the autumn splendour swap - these are the last three - one has a red binding/border, I know, but I thought I was going to run out of gold, so I did one with red. As it happened, I didn't run out of gold, but whatever.

Then, I decided to get something old out - I have these Japanese blocks-of-the-month which I am gradually doing (only a year or so behind schedule) and one of them was sort of half done, so I finished it off. At the end, each block will have a fabric around the circle, but for the moment, I've just used paper to give the effect. This is block number 4 (here are the others)- only 5 more to go. I've decided I'm going to designate it as a 40th birthday present for a friend, so it's going to have to be finished by October 2008. Having a deadline, even a distant one, will help me actually work on it. It's not that I don't like it, it just tends to get pushed down the list of stuff to be done because it's not urgent.

Lastly, as I said above, when Alex got to the point where he needed me downstairs (light supervision & help with computer game) I decided to dig out the small fine-tipped soldering iron I purchased at Festival of Quilts and have a go at Fusing Fabric, Margaret Beal style (I bought her book too). Basically, I just played around, but it was fun. I'll definitely do some more with it, though I'm not sure it's a technique I'll use a lot, but I can see using it for small projects, like postcards and things. Some more photos here (this one very blurry because I took it without a flash - the flash makes the nylon organza look really garish...)