Postcards and a Mini Quilt

Last week I caught up with a couple of postcards for the BQLPC birthday swap.  This week there are 2 birthdays - Claire's and Avril's, so here's the story of these two cards. 

Claire asked for "Celebrations" and I had started on a card with fireworks (it being November) but with going back and forth free machining with metallic threads puckered the fabric and it didn't look very nice.  So back to the drawing board.  How would you celebrate a birthday?  A piece of cake, maybe with a cup of tea, so using the fabric which looks fairly similar to my Cath Kidston bucket mug as inspiration

I came up with this

And there had to be a tea pot on the back

I think that's a celebration, don't you.

The next birthday is Avril's and she requested "Anatomy", I tried several drawings and also hoped that skeleton figures from Halloween might get the creativity going, but then I plumped for feet, don't know why really.  From time spent in my room Sunday before last taking my socks off to draw feet.  I next tea dyed some calico (so the feet didn't look too pale) I also took another small piece of calico and applied some PVA glue.  After that dried I was able to paint it with some nail varnish (sounds batty, bear with me)  After bondawebbing the feet onto the background and free machining I then cut out the varnished calico into toenail shapes and glue them to the feet.  It worked!

I also gave this daring pair of feet a tattoo (can't stand tattoos) but I felt they needed an extra bit of decoration.  It almost seems a shame to send this one-off card, but I have kept the drawing and may have make another to keep as reference in my postcard "library".

A surprise that I received in the post last week was this lovely little quilt which was one of my choices from "Another Little Quilt Swap" (the link here is to a Flickr site showing the quilts in the swap) hosted by Kate North.  This quilt came all the way from California (which must have been a lot sunnier than the grey, grim day that we had here), made by Mary from Needled Mom. 

 The front

 The back looks really good too

And this fat quarter of Hollywood fabric came with it.

Meanwhile my quilt in this swap has started its journey to Australia.

On Saturday I went with my Mum to Doughty's roadshow sale near Ferndown.  I wasn't going to buy fabric, oh dear....

...what a mistake to make!

And on Sunday morning, while David was working I went out to enjoy the autumn sunshine and the fabulous display of the trees.  This autumn has provided a spectacular show of coloured leaves.  I went to Creekmoor and walked along part of the Roman Road up to the old railway bridge (once the Somerset and Dorset line) and then up on the bridge and along towards Upton Heath.

 At the bridge looking towards Corfe Mullen

 Looking from the top of the bridge

 Sun shining through the yellowing leaves

 The heathland in Upton Heath looking towards Beacon Hill

 Looking down Roman Road towards Upton

 The footpath going towards Upton Country Park

 Looking back at the carpet of leaves.