Whew.

Well, it's been several days since I posted, but I didn't get any sewing done on Friday or Saturday, and also didn't get much of any post, so it hardly seemed worth it. I did receive on piece of quilt related post on Friday - the FQ on the left, with the tiny hearts on. This was a hostess gift for a swap I am hostessing (but not even doing blocks for!) on scrapquilting forum - wasn't that sweet? Thanks Brenda! The fabric to the left are some scraps from my friend Lana for me to use when I get to my London themed postcards - it has Big Bens on it, as you can probably tell. I knew she had it from a signature block swap, and she was happy to pass it along.

Today I did finally get some sewing done, including finishing the commissioned top - there it is, on my bed. Looks fine, but not really my style. Still, it's what it was supposed to be, so I guess that works. I do still have to trim threads, etc, but essentially, it's done.

Finishing that meant that I could get on with something else that I wanted to do more, so I decided to tackle the trees cards. My idea was to do something with folded fabric, so I played around with some triangles, and came up with the idea on the above left. But I decided that looked too much like hills and not enough like trees, so I modified it to the idea on the right. The triangles of the trees are loose at the top, but sewn into the grass - I think before posting them, I will probably attach the tops of the trees with a single stitch, or maybe just catch them in a quilting line or something, otherwise I have doubts they will travel well. But that will be one of the last things I do, as I want to quilt behind them first...

For these cards, I used my fail-safe method for testing ideas - I asked my kids what they thought. In this instance, DD2 (age 7) was the initial tester - she saw the second card first, and said - "hey, that looks like trees with trunks, and the green bit is grass" (right answer!). Then she saw the first one and pronounced that it looked like "hills with mud on the ground". Later, my DS (age 4) came up to see what I was doing, so I showed him the card (the second one) and asked what it looked like "I dunno, Mummy". When asked again, his response was "Christmas Trees" - so I figured I was good to go.