Saturday Sewing and Other Bits

On Saturday I joined some ladies for a sewing day where we work on our own projects and have a lot of natter!  A really enjoyable and relaxing day. Choosing a project to work on I needed a book cover for my paperbacks that I take to work to read of a lunchtime.  I's wanted to make the bookcover from Susan Briscoe's book "130 Little Quilt Blocks" which I've found quite a useful reference for quilt blocks.  I used an applique Retro Bird and fused that on a background, ready to stitch.  I used my own block for the back 3d Bow Tie block and the blocks matched in with some really bright Australian fabric that I've had for some years.

Heres the front

 And the back

Just a bit bright!

I thought I would share with you the postcards that I received last month in the Doodling swap.  Some lovely postcards indeed. They were all stitched doodles one with the addition of piecing too.

Now I've started on a new set of postcards for a swap next month called Using Up Ribbons and Lace. So yesterday afternoon I got out my jar of ribbons and bags of odd bits of lace and made a mess

 And below is some weaving pinned at the edges waiting to be ironed onto a fusible background (calico with fusible webbing face up) which I'll do later

I said in my last post I was getting hooked on crochet.  This is what I did during the week, a mandala.  No purpose to this, I just liked it and wanted to have a go.

This was from Simply Crochet, a pattern by Dutch crocheter and blogger, Wink. Her one is in lovely soft colours, mine is just a bit bright. I thought it was an easy pattern to follow, but as the circle became bigger my counting went awry so it's curling upwards, but never mind, I enjoyed making it.