More postcards

We'll my Kindle has had good use recently, I'm still excited and have been downloading books for my holiday in Wales next month.   But it is now time to put it down and get on with some sewing and to show you the latest postcards from BQLPC April swap, themed "Winners".  This was a more difficult theme than I had originally thought and my fellow swappers have done it justice.

From Alice - the Winners envelope, how many of us have had one through out doors.

From Jacquie the winning raffle ticket.  Jacquie made her cards from a pack of fabrics and threads she won with a winning raffle ticket bought at an EG meeting.

Me, well I wanted to use my very limited digitizing skills to create a Star winner.  The photos seem to have a shadow on them, ah well.

It's time to get on with my table topper, I admit to getting bored doing the same block continuously but I want this table topper to be plainish and so its time to get started again.  It's 10 blocks down, 6 more to go.

I'm so excited!

Well, him indoors said it - "Oh Just go and buy one" so I have.  Tomorrow I take possession of a Kindle Touch.  I have the Kindle app on my phone and read books on that while I'm waiting in the car or for an appointment.  Can't wait for tomorrow all I have to do now is decided on a couple of new books, any suggestions?

I told myself I wouldn't feel guilt but I do

But I've talked sternly to myself and told myself its okay not to blog if you don't have anything to say.  However I do have something to show you today.   On Saturday our local EG organised a workshop with Maggie Smith, the title of which was "Get Stuffed", which is also the title of her new book.

Maggie was my tutor when I studied for my C&G Part 2 si I was looking forward to Getting Stuffed.  Everyone really enjoyed it, not that too much work got done we were so busy listening to Maggie explain the various techniques for stuffing shapes.  There wasn't really an 'end product' to the workshop so there wasn't any pressure to get the piece finished.

I've been feeling very unmotivated recently but Maggie's workshop has galvanised me into life.   My sample is a bit grubby and crumpled but I've had fun creating it and will use the techniques I think in one of the yellow journal pages.

Something else I'll be using in one of the yellow JP's is prairie points.  I made several using transfer painted sateen which was a nightmare to fold.  However I got over that by making myself a simple template to fold the fabric over and iron it into place.  Somewhere on the web I'd seen a metal template that you placed the fabric over and ironed it down.  I cut the corner off a piece of card at 45 degrees and used this in the same way, similar to a template for sewing mitres.  This worked a treat, I just had to make sure my fingers weren't too near the point when I placed the iron down.

I soon had quite a few prairie points, being sateen and slippy I had to put a single stitch in at the bottom of the fold to stop them springing apart.

Now all I have to do with them is decide how to use them.  I have several more pieces of transfer painted sateen if I want to make more but I think I might need to use asbestos gloves next time.

Happy Easter

Just a very quick hello and to show you the cute egg cosies.  I got the pattern from a blog tutorial from one of the blog hops.  I think its by Bronwyn Hayes of Red Brolly but not sure.  I made a few minor changes to make them more acceptable to 30+'s.  Here they are.

Keith made the egg cups and the egg inside is the chocolate covered plastic toy kind of egg.  Not all the recipients like eggs so boiling and decorating them was out.  Also two are on diets, so not much choccy with these eggs.  Keith and I decided we'd not bother with Easter eggs this year, I shouldn't eat them anyway as my blood sugar results are not too good.

However, Keith did go out and buy we one of the eggs and made another cup to put it in.  Now do I make myself a cosy or not.... hmm.

This was on my breakfast tray, ahh he does care.

March and April Journal Pages

The final two red journal pages are now ready to post.

 March following the dance theme as well as red, is called "Lambeth Walk"

The April one is called "Line Dancing" The swirly bling bit is a Sizzix die which I thought looked a bit like embroidery on a cowgirl shirt.

Oops... the photo has come in sideways, this happens occasionally with Blogger and I don't know how to turn them.  I know its the right orientation in my folder.  Anyway this is a photo of the four red months showing how I've tried to create  gradation from rich red to pale pink when they are all hung together.  All the backgrounds are created in the same way, strips of fabrics woven then sewn down but each page being different.  The next four months challenge colour is yellow.  I've already done one yellow JP but not sure whether to include it in the yellow set or not as strictly speaking I didn't do it for this one.

I've shown bits of this one before, which I started as my Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge but it appears to have got lost in translation somewhere.  I do have the first 8 or 9 stitches of the challenge in this piece however maybe I'll have to start another one to include the other stotcjes.   So far its not got a name maybe someone could suggest something.