A Boomerang Gift

A couple of years ago, just after I'd started making quilts, my niece gave me a quilt kit for Christmas. The theme for the kit was Peanuts Baseball and I immediately recognised the present as a boomerang - to be returned to the giver - because my niece and her daughter love Peanuts and baseball (they once spent a year in America). 

I finished it off along with a couple of others, expecting to have hand surgery at the end of November. The surgery has now been postponed until February but my niece was very pleased to receive the quilt as a house-warming gift.

ATCs - incoming - part 2

And here are the other four ATCs, as beautiful and fascinating as the others. (They're only in a separate batch because my computer wouldn't let me load them all at once).

Thanks to all the makers of these wonderful gems. I loved receiving them and look forward to taking part in more swaps.

Sylvia

Marianne

Maggi

Barbara

ATCs - incoming - part 1

The best part of the ATC swap was receiving interesting mail. I opened each with great anticipation and excitement and was rewarded every time with a beautiful and fascinating gift. And they were all so different.

Here are the first four:

Jenny

Donna

Chris

Cheryl

ATCs

A couple of months ago, I joined in an ATC swap with other participants in the Embellish, Stitch and Enrich course. 

I found a bag of fancy yarn scraps at Lincraft. My first thought was that they weren't colours I'd normally put together. My second thought was that they weren't colours I'd normally use. So I bought the bag and decided to use the yarns as the basis for my ATCs. 

I was very busy at the time and hadn't finished the lessons (I'll get back to them one day - really, I will!), so I wanted to do something reasonably quick and simple. I was fairly pleased with the result. I like the way the yarns all went together. Here are my ATCs:

Op Shop Treasure Trove

While in Wagga Wagga for my mother's funeral, I called into an op shop with my uncle, who was looking for reading matter to sustain him on his somewhat erratic homeward journey (he's returning to Brisbane via Melbourne and Sydney).

I found these threads on a table out the front of the op shop. Some of them are very grubby and I don't know how useful they'll be but I couldn't resist buying all of them. I must go and start playing.

Farewell

Textile arts have taken second place in my life in recent weeks with the illness and death of my mother.

My mother introduced me to the wonderful world of textiles. She was always sewing, knitting and crocheting. I remember playing with her treadle sewing machine at a very early age and I soon moved onto sewing and many other textile arts.

More quilts

I've managed to complete a couple more quilts recently. The blue and white one is a surprise for a friend in Brisbane.

This one is another one for my granddaughter Emma. Her mother chose the fabrics and asked me to put it together. She seems to like the finished product.