Espritpatch

Again this week, I have managed to finish a few of my WIP from last week. My Happy Cloud and my Modern Mini RR are all finished now. My Halloween Witch is brightening the living room.

My witch wall-hanging, from the Halloween See-Saw with Diane, is finished. I am so proud to have been able to finish it this month before it turned into a UFO! I showed you some of the quilting last Wednesday.

Teddy is now nice and comfy with two cosy cushions holding him up in Miss Strawberry Shortcake's room.

Let's have a look at my original list that I posted in September to see how far (or not) I have gone. Have I managed to cross off 1/3 of my (ever-growing) list in about 35 days? 1. Finish Maisy quilt - top pieced, need quilting and binding - still the same. Although I have now received the wadding I want to use. But now that I am ready to quilt, I can't put up my quilting frame because the building work in the house. :-(

Have you heard of  ThreadBias ? I hadn't until very recently. How to describe it? It is a free online community focusing on quilting/sewing, similar I guess to the knitters' Ravelry. It seems fairly new but I am sure it will grow big quickly. I signed up earlier this week. If you are doing the weekender bag by Amy Butler via the Long Week-end group on Flicker , you might have joined Threadbias too.

It is that time again when the lovely Amy from Amy's creative side is hosting her Fall Blogger's Quilt Festival . It is always packed with gorgeous quilts and wonderful story. And although I am not making award winning quilts, I like participating and showing the world my own creations! It is a great way to reach out to people you would have never met otherwise and to discover some wonderful blogs that you didn't where at the reach of your computer!

Welcome! Today is my stop on the Travellin' Pic Stitch Blog Hop organised by Laura at Quokka Quilts Make yourself comfortable and less travel together for a little bit.

These last few nights, I have been busy quilting my Halloween See-Saw top that I showed you on Monday as I would really like to have it finished before the end of the month so it doesn't go and join my long list of UFOs. And I am a lucky girl because my DH bought me the free-motion quilting bible from Leah Day. If you read my blog regularly, you will now that I am in admiration with Leah's work and use her blog a lot lately to find inspiration for my quilting. Well I now have her book to marvel at all the design patterns.

I don't want today to be only about depressing, horrible people preventing us to enjoy our hobby so I thought I'd also show you what I finished yesterday. Earlier in the year I had made some peg bags out of a couple of tea towels. Not long after one of my friend was visiting and she liked my new peg bag and asked whether I could make her own or give her the pattern for her Mum. Well I didn't have a pattern so I decided it would be easier to make her one. I are meeting up next week-end with another one of our friend so I decided to make 2, one for each.

I hadn't heard of it either until Vicki posted about it yesterday. Basically, somebody copies one or more of your entire blog post and post them on their own fake blog. So what's the fuss you might think? On these fake blogs, where your own post is replicated, they are adverts on the side bars. It seems that most of these ads are for porn sites or else. So not only money is made out of your work (your post generates some visits and visitors and visitors might click on the ads) but you are also associated with sites you might not want to be related to. I don't think I have personally been a victim of blog scraping, my blog is probably not popular enough but then who knows? I don't want to be associated with sick and horrible people promoting inappropriate content. My blog is where I share what I enjoy doing in my precious free time, what I have enjoyed creating and taking part in and I want it to stay this way only. My blog has also made me "meet" ...

It is the time now... to share with you where my little witch went on her journey. You might remember that she started here before I sent her off on her way to Diane  who took her on point and added this lovely paper-pieced blocks While Diane worked on my block, I added a border to her witch with 2 sides in orange and 2 sides with pumpkins and scary cats   When I got my witch back, I decided to turn her back again as I felt this was the way I saw her flying off and added a printed fabric that I bought years ago. But I didn't have quite enough of fabric (just a FQ) so I had to calculate carefully to be able to cut out 4 triangles. I then added a border to the top and bottom of the square to get to a rectangle shape with fabric from the same line.  She was ready to fly back to Diane who added some lovely flying geese borders while I added eyes on orange and lime and some pumpkins to 2 sides to her top. I then appliqu...

Today I finished assembling my own Modern Minx Beginner Bee block. I was the Queen Bee in September and choose the Diamond Ripple block. I had cut out all the squares and assembled all the HSTs but I hadn't put the block together yet. So yesterday evening I tried a game of sudoku with my HSTs, which wasn't as easy as I thought, to avoid having 2 of the same HSTs in a line or column and after a few attempts, I think I succeeded! I also worked on Johanna's block for Bee Europa 2012 . She has asked us to make some paper-pieced letters, I had "a" and "o". My blocks are done and ready to go to her for her quilt for a little brother. And I also worked on my Happy Cloud for the Super Marion quilt-along but this one is still a WIP. I will be linking this post to Sinta's BOM Rehab tomorrow. Celine

The last few days have been quite productive for me, which always makes me feel good! and I have some finished things to show too, another feel good factor in the midst of the house extension project which has almost taken over our lives really. I finished Miss Strawberry Shortcake ballet bag yesterday evening and she proudly showed it off this morning to her baby sister, after using it for her dance class.

I have finally picked my fabric for the UK Text Addict swap . I bought 3 because I thought my first choice might have been to childish but my swap buddies confirmed it was OK as charm squares. So in the end I am staying with my original idea: Peak Hour by Kelly Wolforn for Riley Blake Designs My fabric is all cut out and I will send it over to Charlotte for swapping very very soon. Celine

And it is finished! I show you the panels yesterday and now I can share the finished tote bag that I have made for my partner for the Mouthy Stitches swap. I hope she likes it. This is the front of the bag and this is the back. I need to make a key fob now, I have a few ideas but I haven't decided which way to go yet! and I will be all ready to send my package early next week. Edited to add: this is my first OPAM for this month. I am hoping for at least another 2! Celine

Another week with lots of project in various stages of advancement as I have fluttered from one to the other this past week again. Yesterday evening, I quilted my 2 panels for the Mouthy Stitches bag I am making. The front and the back I now need to finish assembling the bag to have my first OPAM this month! I still have the log cabin panel I quilted at the week-end to finish into a cushion A couple of days ago I cut some pieces to make a ballet bag for Miss Strawberry Shortcake using this tutorial  from Tiffany. I have also progressed a little on my piranha block for the Super Mario quilt-along. I need to cut more fabric for these blocks. I have Fire Flower and the question mark blocks both started but I have ran out of yellow squares now. I have more on-going projects of course but they haven't progressed this week so I'll keep them for later! I am linking this post to Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wendnesday . Celine

September was my month for the Modern Minx Beginner Bee where we are making blocks from the Modern Blocks: 99 Quilt Blocks from Your Favorite Designers book. I picked Diamond Ripples block and asked my fellow bee to use a white background with a mixture of the yellow, lime, orange, light blue/aqua and red prints. I haven't received all my blocks yet but I can share with you the lovely blocks I have to date. The first one I got was from Flaun this one arrived from Connie  and these 2 from Helen and her mum this one was from Laura and I still need to finish mine. I have all my HST sewn together, I "just need" to put them in a block now. I should still be getting a few more but with those already I can see a lovely spring quilt. Celine

I suppose one of the advantage of having a boy as a first-born is that you can reuse a lot of the clothes for the following children. And of course that leads to be Miss Baby being complimented for being a cute little boy but who cares at 9 months? When you are a "Big Girl of 3" as Miss Strawberry Shortcake likes to put it, I guess it is a bit different. Hello Kitty, Fairy and Princesses are higher on the favorite list than tractors, cars and other trucks. And of course although she isn't pink-mad (yet?), it is more favored than brown or blue. All of this to say that I had almost chuck Mister Cars old coat in a charity bag before I thought it was probably silly to buy a brand new one just for a question of style/colour. Raising kids is expensive enough! What about trying to make the coat more girly? The jacket is a plain navy blue one with a red fleece lining. This week-end I bought some cute red elephant buttons that Miss Strawberry Shortcake loved as soon as she sa...

I picked a UFO today that I have been willing to finish off for a few months now. I had made the little Log Cabin panel in September 2009, playing on dark and light contrast. I wasn't sure how to quilt it so I look into a book called Quilting makes the Quilt to find inspiration. I decided to go for a straight line quilting design slightly off-centred. I like the effect. What do you think? I am linking this post to Leah's UFO Sunday . Now to finish it into a cushion for Miss Strawberry Shortcake and that will be one less UFO on my list! And today I also finished stitching my panel "Random symmetry" for the Mouthy Stitches swap. I hope my partner likes it. Celine

What do you blog about when you haven't much new work to show off? Well, I could tell you that I will be in bed early tonight (I hope anyway!) after a terrible night with Miss Baby being unwell and crying for most of the night and a marathon-day with a trip to London in the middle of it. I am feeling quite exhausted and my grand (sewing) plans for today are just too much for me at the moment. I have sewn a little today on the train, I prepared a couple of hexagons but not enough to show off really. And to make my day better, the stupid game I had been playing/getting addicted to over the last week has had a bug most probably and I have lost all of what I had done so far. It took me back to square one this morning, how annoying... But when I finally got home tonight, I found a little package which made my day and finally put a smile on my face. My Japanese charm squares were back. Yeah! I sent this and I received 56 different yummy lovely looking charm squares like the ones b...

Late post today because I have literally finished sewing the stars I wanted to show... All my stars for the [3x6] Sampler Quilt Mini Bee are finished now. The posting deadline is Monday so I had to get going with those. I really like the pattern I have picked, even if I was a bit scared to get started and I like the different variations I have with the colour scheme. Show time now... orange and aqua on a white background for Wendi red and white on a white background for Chandra purple and teal on a white background for Krista dark blue and green on a white background for Wendy coral and aqua on a white background for Cindy and the same orange and aqua on a white background for Jodi Now a picture of all the stars with my own in pink that I made a couple of days ago. Celine