Thursday, September 25, 2014

Create Handmade Gifts for All Winners

Hi! Today I've got the winners of the Create Handmade Gifts for All blog tour.

The winner of last year's Quilting Arts Gifts magazine is commenter number 34, June. And number 30, Gina, is entered to win the Grand prize--the messenger bag pictured on the cover of Create Handmade Gifts for All.

I've emailed the winners and Candy, and she will be holding the drawing for the Grand Prize soon.

I'll be back soon to share rhino quilt progress. Have a great Thursday!

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Create Handmade Gifts for All--Blog Hop and Giveaway

Hi there! I'm super happy to share my friend Candy's new e-book, Create Handmade Gifts for All, with you all today. Candy blogs at Candied Fabrics, where she shares her amazing creations showcasing her beautiful hand dyed fabrics and free-motion sketch stitching and quilting. Candy also creates patterns and online dyeing courses, and keeps busy teaching university biology and selling her wares at art fairs as well. Candy is an inspiration (a hard working one!) and I really love her unique design and color sense.

Handmade Gifts Cover

The e-book contains patterns for 18 different gifts--bags and accessories, home decor, and holiday ornaments/decor--just in time to start thinking about handmade holiday gifts if you are a thinking-ahead type of person. One of my favorite projects in this collection is the convertible tote bag:

Convertible-tote-group-01
The bag can be used as pictured here, or the strap can be adjusted and the top flap folded up, to give you more room in the bag if you need it.

And now for the giveaways! Please leave one comment per person, telling me about your favorite handmade gift to give or receive. I have comment moderation enabled so your comment won't show up until after I approve it.

One commenter will win a copy of last year's Quilting Arts Gifts magazine.
QAGifts-13
And one other commenter will be entered to win the Grand Prize, the messenger bag that is featured on the cover of the e-book. Comments will be open until 9/24 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific time, and I'll draw the winners and post them that evening.
Check out all the other stops on the blog hop for more chances to win. Good luck!

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Works in progress

I've been working on my hand pieced trip around the world, slowly but steadily. I have half of the 12th round finished and the next 3 rows are planned out (pink, turquoise, red dot). It's a good project to do while watching Netflix and fun to see it grow, even though it's slower now.

trip around the world round 12 

And I'm back to working on my rhino quilt again. I put it away a few weeks ago with the rhino hand basted to the background. Yesterday and today I machine stitched it in place and started removing the red basting threads (the edges of the rhino were also hand basted under, before stitching it to the background.)
rhino process 

Other than that, I've been busy getting the kids into school and getting all settled in with our routines. I need to go buy another compass for high school geometry and somebody needs new shoes this week, too. I went to high school curriculum night last week, and get to go tonight and tomorrow to hear what to expect this year from the elementary teachers. 

Hope you're having a good September!