This and that - and the other

Forgot to blog yesterday - not that there was much to show, as I didn't do any work - though I did get some nice post, so I'll show that here, a bit further down. Today I had a few hours in the morning, so I worked on two things with common elements - an altered tin for a trade on FAT - only requirement was that it have a heart somewhere on it. Mine has several. The trade was originally an altoid tin, but some leniency was allowed for those who might not have access, I have used this cookie tin instead - it held a single cookie - it's about 5 inches across and about an inch high. The fabric on top is glitter felt, with the heart made of a silk fabric. The ribbon around the edges is from India - a birthday gift from my friend Lana...



This is a padded heart ornament for a swap on Textile Challenges - it's actually not a good representation of the colour at all, but I took several photos and none of them came out well in terms of colour - there's quite a bit of blue and green as well as some coppery overtones. Anyway, trust me that it looks much more interesting in person.




Here's something lovely I received in the post today - my first house front for the house swap (also on Textile Challenges) - this one was made by Michelle - my chosen theme was House of the Rising Sun (first thing that popped into my mind - plus I've always liked the song) and so she's gone back to the lyrics of the song and pulled out the cards in relation to the gambling theme. And a bonus - a piece of the ice-dyed fabric she used on the back. Lucky me.



And finally - what I received yesterday - these great fabrics from Margaret, in return for the blocks I sent her way a little while back. And two placemats, which I bound tonight at my little quilt group - these are small pieces I've tried out quilting patterns on. I have about 5 or 6 - eventually, I will have enough to use as placemats or give as gifts, etc.

I heard from Helen that my African block (which I teased you about the other day) arrived with her today, but I'll wait until tomorrow to show that, as I will need something to blog about on my no-work Friday...

Lazy(ish) Sunday

Well, despite kids demanding my attention and husbands (well, only one) deciding to do stuff in the garden which then required him to ask me questions every 10 minutes (what is it with that?) I did manage to get some work done - these are the fronts and backs of the little notebooks from yesterday - I didn't do a lot to them, just a layer of sizeflor (coloured lutradur) and some embellishments - but they do make sweet little notebooks. I might well do some more of them - worth popping into Muji next time I'm in Kingston, at least.

And I also did some more little double four patches - these look a little odd, as there are some very dark and very light ones, and almost no mediums. But they'll all be fine when all 75 of the little beasties are together...

Also below, the two pineapples which came yesterday, which I promised to show - and here they are. These are from Nina. Thanks Nina!

Double inchies

A group that I belong to (Fibre Art Bits) which swaps small bits, recently organised a swap for 2" squares - which we are calling double inchies. Don't know if that's the technical term or not, but there you go.

Today I made 4 sets of 5 for swapping. They aren't identical within each set (for instance, different words - I wanted to do both "dream" and "peace" but didn't have either a D or a P in the purple beads...), but they are fairly close. All of them have fabric backgrounds and satin stitched edges, as well as fabric on the back. Otherwise, the bits vary - ribbon, stick-on bits from the scrapbooking section (I have no interest in actually scrapbooking, but I love the stuff!) , brads and copper wire on the green; flowers from a birthday card, textured paper and little buttons on the orange; ribbon, copper mesh, sequins and letter beads on the purple; lace, buttons and eyelets on the black ones (the fabric there is discharged, the others are hand-dyes).

I had fun working with these - they seemed very big after working on inchies, so the tendency was to over-crowd them; I had to restrain myself from using too many things.

Tomorrow, I'll be working on testing the April bag for the bag challenge on BQL so I won't be able to show that just yet - but maybe if I'm lucky, I'll have some interesting things in the post!

I'm back...

Well, remarkably enough, I have managed to survive my few days without internet access or a sewing machine, and come out of it more or less sane (or at least, no less sane than I started - about which starting point we will not comment!)

Thanks to not being at home and having tons of things to do, I not only read a book but also made major strides on this cross-stitch I received for my birthday - before the weekend, I had only done the four pot outlines, so you can see how much work I've done. Who knows, I might even finish it before I get tired of winter and Christmas!

I did come home to lots of nice post, though still not the missing postcard from Vicki (dang) - maybe tomorrow! I did, however, receive the other Christmas inchies from my swap with my surface embellishment group - not sure what I am going to do with them yet, at the moment, I think I will put them to the side and have a think about them.



I also got two magazines (woo hoo) and this great card from Heather, which is for the reused swap on BQLPC - I won't go into detail about all the fun things she reused, but the list on the back was long and comprehensive. I do enjoy making those sorts of cards. Maybe when I have some free time (ha ha) I will do a series just for fun - or to swap here.


I did get two more of the postcards from my Christmas swap which hadn't yet arrived - both from down under - the present from Carole in New Zealand and the stocking from Christine in Australia. Both of them will get put away almost straight away, but that's ok, because of course they will come out next year, and for many subsequent years to adorn my house during December...

I have kept a handful of winter postcards out to put in my postcard wallhanging - I'll show those perhaps tomorrow - and then the plan is to pull out lots of favourites - we might make it a family exercise tonight, actually - to go up for a few months. Come spring, I might do a floral theme - I have a lot of spring florals lurking around...

Happy New Year everyone & keep on blogging!

Christmas inchies

Decided it was time to do something with the Christmas inchies from one of my swaps - here they are in a frame. I actually have some more coming from another swap, but as those are all double-sided and carefully made with holes for hanging, I will probably hang them. A few of these were actually double sided or had little dangles or hangers, but I decided that it was better to make a tiny change and have them on display that to put them "somewhere" where they'd never be seen again... Granted, these won't be on view all year, but I'll add them to my seasonal decorations, so that should be fun.

Christmas inchies

Another day with no work done - this is because I was able to retrieve my computer (the old one) from the shop - and it works now, though of course, there are lots of fiddly things to be done, like downloading software and so on, which is what I spent part of the afternoon doing. It is also because the kids got out of school at 1.30, so by the time we got back from fetching the computer (and the item of post which had to be signed for, from the local office, which of course is in the opposite direction from the computer place) it was practically time to head to school...

Anyway, amidst all this computer stuff, the post arrived, containing the lovely Christmas inchies above. These are from the swap with Fibre Art Bits. I will get some more Christmas inchies from my surface embellishment group - not sure what I will do with them all when they are here, but I'll think of something. Anyway, aren't they lovely?



And I also got these two lovely postcards - one is for the 1940's swap, and is from Anne R, the other is from Di and is for our Christmas swap - the photo doesn't show quite how sparkly it is, but it's lovely (yeah, I know, I've overused that word in this swap, but it is)... Tomorrow is grocery shopping and face-painting at a birthday party for a friend, so the chance of much work is slim, but you never know!

Box of Inchies

Believe it or not, in the midst of going to the farmer's market, doing laundry, putting up the Christmas Tree (& decorating it), starting dinner (roast pork, mmm) and all those other things, I did actually manage to craft today. For Christmas, I had intended to make a box of inchies for my mother, but I decided that she would have more fun if she could help choose the stuff, so the two of us went up and made inchies. We made our lives a little easier by doing them onto paper (we used 6 different kinds of rusted paper) rather than fabric bases. The photo on the right shows the final arrangement, but as the colour is a bit off, I've put the left hand photo in as well, which shows the colours better - we were still playing with arrangements at that point. I think they are pretty fabulous, if I do say so myself.

And got some nice stuff in the post today - on the left is a Christmas card from Julie (again, bad colour, but then again, the weather today has been dark and gloomy) and a package of bits (I love bits. You guys know that. And hey, we used one on the inchies, so they were well timed!)

And two postcards, both for the L is for... swap - on the left, Lace from Priscilla and on the right, Luciano (Pavarotti) from Judy. Tomorrow, school fair, so frankly, it's a good thing we'll have the advent calendar and the giveaway draw or it would be a dull day in blogville.

Love inchies

...and I do (love inchies, that is). Here's what I did today - some quick inchies for the theme "love" over on Inching Artists - for once, I didn't use fabric at all, just rusted paper as a background, on a piece of embossed gold card. I thought it would make a nice anniversary card (15 years in February for me) - if only I can manage not to misplace it between now and then! There are 3 heart sequins, 3 heart charms, then two hearts cut from copper scrim, with spirally sequins wrapped around them. And a face, of course.

A whole lotta Tuesday going on

Well, I have lots of photos to share today, even if I don't feel like I got a huge amount done. I finished off the K is for... cards, which I had printed the fabric for ages ago, just never got around to finishing. They will go in the post tomorrow, as the glue on the jewel star wasn't quite dry today when I made a trip to the PO to send out everything else I had. The photos showed better in Picasa than when printed, but I think they are still kind of fun.

And the other thing I made was this little set of pink inchies for the Inching Artists challenge "monochromatic" - they are not as glaring pink as they appear in the picture - I may try to get a better photo in better light, if we ever get such a thing - the light at the moment is not great, as everything is grey and drizzly and horrible - makes a (not very pleasant) change from my week in San Diego!

That may be all I made, but I did receive lots of things in the post today - two postcards (actually, the black one came yetserday and I forgot to blog it) - the lace is for the L is for... swap from Annette; the black one is from Flischa for a swap called mostly black, , which I need to do my cards for as well - maybe tomorrow, if I have time.



That's not all that came in the post, though - I also had these two orange blocks, for the orange block swap (they are early - the swap isn't due until January). I've made two blocks so far, need to do about 10 more, I think. But it's not due until January... These are from Megan and Mary S.



I also got this lovely selection of sunprints, from my sunprint swap with my dyeing group - woo hoo, more funky fabrics to use!



And last but not least, I got these two selections of goodies. On the left is some stuff from Annie, who I sent some clay faces to recently (I got the better end of this deal, I think!) and on the right is some birthday presents from my friend Lana - I especially like the "inspiration pack" which is essentially, a baggie of bits - one of my favourite things ("bits", that is). What a nice day for stuff.

Inching towards Christmas

Christmas inchies were the order of the day today as I have two swaps of these, both of which need to be in by early December. I know it's nowhere near early December, but I am away until the 17th, and then there's the mailing time to the US - so I thought if I had them done before I went, I could post them while in the US... So that's what I did today. These pics show them packed up and ready to go - one is doing sets of five, the other is pairs & they have to have an eyelet and be decorated on both sides, so I have added some nice Christmas sequins to the backs of these (but haven't photographed the backs). Here are the sets I did - mostly snowflakes, no one will be surprised to see!




The left set is a purple snowflake fabric background, with variegated purple thread edging and blue or white plastic snowflakes. The ones on the right have a white and blue snowflake fabric background, with decorative stitching around the edges and snowflake brads in blue, white or silver.




And here we have a blue snowflake batik background (yes, I do like snowflake fabrics - how'd you guess?) with transparent "snowflakes" which are actually buttons and only have 5 arms, not six, but I think they work anyway, don't you? On the right, the purple fabric again, with some silver foil on it, then snowflake sequins in various colours. Both of these have silver metallic thread around the edge - straight stitched on the left and zig zag on the right.




And then I decided to move to stars and do a few in more traditional Christmas colours - a green leaf background (I think it's a Debbie Mumm fabric) with gold wooden stars, and on the right a gold shimmery fabric, with red silk satin stitch to edge and on the back a very pretty Christmas print with mistletoe and pointsettias. And of course, red and gold star jewels on the front.





And to keep the inchie theme, I got these in the post today - orange and black stamped inchies, from the October swap on Joanne's blog. I have an idea for something fun to do with them for my friends who are really into Hallowe'en, but that's for next year. At the moment, they are just adorning my pinboard. And, not an inchie, but lovely nonetheless is this "J" card, from Melinda - J is for Jack. Great idea, Melinda - thanks!





Finally, I have been promising Sarah that I would help her make a pencil roll for her coloured pencils for a while now, and we finally had a time we could both do it this afternoon. She did a lot of it, but got tired of sewing the lines where the pencils go after a while, so I finished it off. She has a set of 24 very nice artist's colouring pencils, so there are 24 spaces, then a larger space for sharpener, rubber, small ruler, etc and then two more pencil spaces for regular pencils at the end; it has a ribbon to tie. Pretty AND practical. I've been making a lot of useful things lately - whatever has got into me? lol.