Machine back at last

Don't know where the last week has gone, well I do its been a round of hospital visits and a trip to Leeds to pick up my newly serviced Bernina. At last I'm able to do some sewing. I did spend some time doing hand sewing but I was really surprised to see just how much I'd missed my machine. Mum's op went well and today she is ensconced in a nursing home for rehabilitation, so far so good...... This is Ruby the Second (well third actually as number one went to the bushfire babies). I made Ruby for a swap but my friends puppy had other ideas and he adopted her. We found him licking her enthusiastically and she was not in good shape for sending onto to my swap partner. So this is her twin all ready for the off and I have it on good authority that her 'sister' is well loved and is acting as a pillow in the puppy basket.

I've received a couple of swaps in the post this week too. The three little atc are from Anne, Pat and Susan of Mixedmedia_atc_uk fame. The card below is from Tracy Border in response to the swap on Surface Design "Anything but cotton".

These are my cards for the same "Anything but cotton" swap. They are layered sheers, polyester brocade burned back and appliqued onto a velvet background with metallic thread.

The private swap this month is on the theme of geometric shapes. I had fun creating the background with Markal sticks and then overdyeing with the markal acting as a resist. The shapes are layered sheers, which I made at our "Serendipity" meeting last week. I've had fun burning patterns into sheers and have one more design I've burned out but I have yet to do something with it.