Another Lovely Surprise

Recently I posted about receiving a copy of Jane Monk's book Tangle Stitches, which I won in a giveaway on Jane's blog. Today the postie brought me an extra  parcel from Jane herself (the book came from the publisher), which contained one of her pincushions as featured on the cover of her book:

Jane also generously sent me all the makings of another pincushion. It includes her beautifully quilted spiral on the top section, a backing piece, and pretty buttons to finish it off.

Thank you Jane for your generosity! I hope that one day, with a lot of practice, I can emulate your beautiful quilting and do your designs justice.

Ssssh!

Did some Christmas sewing. One item finished, I'm not sure how many more to go!

T-Shirt

A long-sleeved t-shirt on a 33 degree day?

Not to wear! I cut this t-shirt out months ago, and sewing it together was an ideal project for a warm day like today. There may be a day or two when I can wear it before summer fully arrives.

Cuttings Update

Definitely time to plant out some of the cuttings from my old garden. They are trying to burst out of the top of their bags.

Sixteen

Sixteen Wild and Goosey blocks completed:

Sorry the ruler stand got in the way at the bottom.

Will I make more? I still have plenty of little scraps. I'll leave them pinned up while I complete a couple of other projects and decide.

Five Lakh Steps

since 2nd October, at an average of just over 15,400 steps per day. I've met the goal every day so far, although today was looking a bit doubtful until I went for a 7,000 step walk after dinner when the temperature dropped a bit.

While it was too warm to walk I finished making the components to complete three more Wild & Goosey blocks, which will give me 16 blocks once I remove the paper and assemble them.

Stash Augmentation

Last month I posted about my dilemma regarding Bonnie Hunter's Grand Illusion mystery. Buy more green fabric, or change the colour scheme?

I bought fabric.

I visited four different shops and picked up some pretty greens. It was interesting to compare the shops' cutting techniques. I won't name the shops I wasn't happy with, but my best experience was at Patchworks Unlimited in Pascoe Vale. Their "quarter metre" cut was generously nearly 2cm longer. So even though I overlock all my fabrics before pre-washing them, the pieces from this shop still have more than 25cms of usable fabric.

At one of the other shops, the fabric was measured and snipped at exactly 25cms, then torn across. The result was a loss of at least a centimetre of fabric due to the distortion of the fabric at each edge, even before I overlocked it. I probably won't go back to that shop.

At another I purchased a couple of pre-cut pieces, but was surprised to discover later that they were not quarter-metre pieces, but quarter-yards. They weren't labelled as such, so that was disappointing. However I also purchased one piece off the bolt, which was cut nicely at just over a centimetre beyond what I asked for, so I don't know why the pre-cut pieces weren't metric (or at least labelled).

So with all these, plus the blacks and whites, I have plenty of fabric ready for the mystery. But there's still nearly four weeks until it kicks off.