'Christmas In July' Swap & Some Sewing

I'm so pleased to be part of the CIJ swap every year... as always, Cheryll does a great job organising us... Thank You Cheryll! x

 

For this year, I was paired to make gifts for Jan, who blogs over at Little Red Hen.

I had encountered Jan occasionally in blogland, but never as a swap partner, so it was great to have a stalk read of her blog & get some ideas together.

Here's what I sent to Jan:

A mini-quilt featuring cute Christmas Tree fabric... a goodie bag with Santa on it (yes I sent goodies for it too!)... & a cheeky Reindeer cross-stitched as an ornament.

I'm glad you like your goodies Jan, it was a pleasure to sew for you!

My parcel of gifties was sent all the way from New Zealand... from beautiful Raewyn, my bloggy friend who writes at Stitching Farm Girl.

Raewyn has blown me away with her gorgeous swap goodies... thank you so much Raewyn♥

 Above you see a very pretty table topper & isn't the candy-cane mini-quilt below just too cute??!

I've received a really pretty & very handy note book folder & pen... two tea towels... a tube of hand cream & some NZ-made choccy, yum!

Hey Raewyn, I think I can deal with the choccy before the Best Before date, ha ha!

 Thank you again to Cheryll for co-ordinating this fun annual swap for us.

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Sewing has begun on the pretty blue & white fabrics I featured in a recent post.

I made one block initially, just to get the feel for putting it together... 

 

Good thing I'd decided to make this quilt block-by-block & just potter with it... the pattern is written so the various sub-units are sewn in groups, resulting in the full blocks not being sewn until almost the end...  BUT there's a mistake in the pattern, which would have resulted in me needing to do some un-sewing of Biblical proportions. Being the tortoise is sometimes a good thing.

Error discovered & remedied, a second block successfully made...
just look how pretty the block is...

... well this is two side-by-side, but you get the idea.

Oh this is going to be so lovely to work on!

Being that this quilt is the same block many times & then laid out in different rotations to create the design, I'm going to press all the seams open; that way, there will be no confusion or annoyance with getting seams to sit nicely when sewing the completed blocks together.

I'm not really a fan of pressing the seams open, but it was the only way I could see this coming together with minimal seam-nesting issues.

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We've had some very wild weather lately... yesterday was treacherous, the worst of it... fortunately we didn't sustain any damage to the house... the gardens are a little bedraggled... but it's passed now & the sun shines once more. I'll take cold sunny days over nasty storms!

Looking forward to spending some time blog reading tonight... feels like it's been an age!

(Perhaps because in blogland terms, it HAS?)

Thanks for calling in & have a great day