Some old projects and some swaps

Things have been a bit quiet around these parts recently. Life has taken over a bit and I haven't been doing as much sewing as usual, but I thought I'd pop in and say Hello, and show a couple of older projects that I've been working on recently.

First of all is my Recess quilt. I found a pile of American Jane Recess charm packs in my local quilt shop a while back and decided to make a simple charm quilt out of them as part of the lovely Kelly's My Precious QAL. I made a good start but got distracted by other things until I saw this beautiful quilt on the Nana Company blog a few weeks ago and fell in love! I had already been thinking about trying a quilt with lots of borders after looking through my new-to-me Sandy Klop book, and seeing the beautiful quilts that evolved in the Round Robin group in the Around the Bend quilt group on Flickr, and after receiving some gorgeous American Jane fabric from some lovely generous people, I decided to get my borders on! I love it so far! Trouble is it's already pretty big so I'm going to have to stop adding borders soon.

I've also been doing a bit more on my Scrap Vomit Quilt that I started around October 2010! This was always a project that I kept wanting to work on, but it always got pushed down the list. Despite Murphy's best attempts at distracting me, I have now got all those blocks sewn together, and I have a bunch of new 2.5" squares thanks to to a swap that Katy set up in the Scrap Vomit flickr group. I love making these blocks. It's a lot of fun to grab squares randomly and chain piece them all and see what the block turns out like. Fun mindless sewing :)

The scrap vomit square swap tempted me off my no-more-swaps-ban, and I have signed up to two swaps on Flickr. First of all the Mouthy Stitches swap. I managed to resist this one the first time round, but those clever mamas decided that the swap item this time was a Tote Bag. Who can resist a tote bag? Not me!

Here is the inspiration mosaic I have made.

Then along came round 9 of the Pillow Talk {Swap} on Flickr. This is my favourite swap. It was the very first Flickr swap I participated in, way before I started this blog. I've done 3 rounds, but missed the last few rounds, and I'm really looking forward to playing again.

Above is my Pillow Talk Swap inspiration, and below is the pillow I received in the first round I did. It is my favourite cushion, and the kids call it "Mummy's precious cushion" It has a teeny tiny hexagon featuring a picture of my first dog Poppy printed onto silk. Amazing!

The Mouthy Stitches sign-ups are closed, but the Pillow Talk Swap sign ups are open now, if anyone fancies joining in, even if you don't, the inspiration mosaics alone are worth a visit. Prepare to lose an hour of two while you enjoy looking at them ;)

Happy wednesday!
Fiona x