My countdown giveaway

Ok, so I was just sitting here wondering what I could do a post about...and as it's been a while since I last had a giveaway....I thought, why not have one.  There is a bit of twist to it.....as you might have guessed by the title....."What's a countdown giveaway Naomi?" I hear you say.....well ,I read something on another blog before I wrote this, and it triggered my weird and wonderful brain into thinking, and here's what you have to do to be entered into my giveaway.....At the time of writing this post, the Countdown Timer is counting down to an event that I'm hanging out for....NO I'M NOT PREGNANT! and it's going to be at zero hours in precisely 84 days, 6 hours and about 35 minutes....all you need to do, is have a stab at guessing what this countdown is!  Easy right?

So, what will you win?  A while back, I made this drawstring bag (see pic below), and figure that it's time it found a new home.  The pink fabric is a cute Breast Cancer Awareness fabric with various shades of pink birds on it.

 

Closing date for guesses will be 31st August, at which point I will pop all correct guesses into a 'hat' and draw one lucky one out.....should no one guess correctly, then I shall add another prize to the draw, and host another giveaway for September.  Good luck and happy guessing! 

*****Edited on 31st August 2012 to say that no one has correctly guessed what this months countdown was for.....so I will add another prize for next month.   Thanks for the guesses everyone.  Comments for August have now been closed off.  Oh, what you want to know what this months was???  Ok, it was the amount of time left till Part 2 of Breaking Dawn (Twilight Trilogy) is released lol******

OMG, check these blocks out

A short while ago, I started a group up on Facebook called Orphan blocks for Aussie Heroes, to give people somewhere to send any stray/orphan quilt blocks they had laying around, and would like to see put to good use.

In the last couple of days I received 2 large yellow envelopes, and a 3kg pre-paid satchel, all containing gorgeous blocks to be used on quilts for Aussie Heroes.

Coral P sent me the following blocks:

Here's a close up of a couple of the blocks:

 Now for some more from Coral:

And last but not least, the last few from Coral:

Then we have the pics of the contents of the 3kg satchel:

Lots of possibilities with that bunch hey?  Ok, then there were a few spares of the plain fabrics from the above pic

Next we have lots more gorgeous blocks...can definately see a few star quilts being produced from the two lots of donations, can't you?

Don't ya just love the coffee/tea pot and tea cup in the bottom right corner of that last pic?

See the far left pinwheel?  Nah don't squint, it's ok, I took a close up so you can see the gorgeous print that looks plain yellow in the above pic....check it out below

It's like the road signs on our highways in Australia....such as Koalas for the next 4km's or whatever!  Cute hey?

Look at all that Bliss....there's one more block of it, top left corner, two pics up from this one, so there's 10 blocks in all....can see a gorgeous quilt for a 'girly girl' Aussie Hero, can't you?



Thank you so much to Caroline and Coral for all the wonderful blocks....stay tuned to see what I make or get made (if anyone local wants to help piece some quilts I'm more than happy to share blocks with you) from them.

Blocks for Aussie Hero Quilts

As you may have noticed, I'm extremely honoured to be a "Friend of Aussie Hero Quilts" and wherever I can, I do my bit to help Jan-Maree out.  Recently I took over shared responsibility of the BOM along with Kylie K from QLD.  August was our first month, and after Kylie and I decided we'd take it in turns, I drew the short straw and got to do the first one, I did a tutorial for a Twisted Ribbon Block.  Here's the six I made and have now mailed off to Jan-Maree.

Also, Jan-Maree had put a request on the AHQ Blog for blocks to be made for the family of fallen hero, Sgt Diddams.  Of course I had to make some, and here's the fruits of my labour....what a funny saying that is, labour to me implies work or hard graft, and I don't consider any of my involvement with AHQ as either of those things, it's more like fun and gratuitous sewing to boot.  Anyway, I digress, here's the blocks I made for the family of Sgt Diddams.

 This one is for his sons quilt.

 This one is for his daughters quilt.

 This is for his wifes quilt.

This is for his parents quilt.

If you have time, please go check out the Aussie Hero Blog, and if you have some spare fabric, can sew, or just want to make a donation of cash or pre-paid mailing satchels, then please contact Jan-Maree, you can email her by clicking HERE or there's several ways to contact her over on the blog.

Special request for an Aussie Hero

A couple of weeks ago, Jan-Maree from Aussie Hero Quilts put a call out for a quilt and laundry bag for an Aussie Hero....ND's wife had contacted AHQ Headquarters (Jan-Maree in other words, lol) requesting a quilt for her darling husband.

I quickly put my hand up, and Jan-Maree and I emailed a couple of times about the quilt, as ND is a Kiwi, but now lives in Australia (when he's not deployed that is) so we wanted to combine those two things...then Jan-Maree got further info from L (the wife) to say that her hubby lost his Mum at a young age, and they were close....and that there was a connection with roses because of that....so are you with me so far?  We have ear marked Kiwi fabrics, Aussie Fabrics, and rose fabric....then it was also established that he loves playing the guitar....so guitar and pick fabric was added to the mix.

Jan-Maree very kindly mailed me off some suitable fabric.....there was the rose fabric, some electric guitar fabric, some kiwi fruit fabric, some kiwi bird fabrics, some aussie bird fabric and the rest I added from my stash.

Here's what I came up with....I used the tutorial from the Aussie Hero blog and after slightly altering the measurements, ta-dah one brick wall quilt.

The following pic is a close up of the label on the back of the quilt.

Lastly, here's the laundry bag I made for him....I cut the letters for his initials out of the guitar pick fabric.

I've already heard from his wife that she thinks he's going to absolutely love his quilt.  I've seen a pic of him with his two young sons, and let me tell you, those two little fellas look like butter wouldn't melt in their mouths...such cuties.  L is hoping that the parcel I mailed off gets to ND in time for Fathers Day...so please, please keep your fingers crossed that it does.

Results of FNSI

The best laid plans of mice and men....seems to be the go around here....so the following is an account of how my Friday Night Sew In (FNSI) panned out....I managed to find 6 different fabrics that I wanted to make my DGD some baby doll nappies out of, got all 6 cut out, started sewing the first one....that's where the snag occurred....somewhere on the tutorial it would've been handy if it said what size nappies the pattern made....or perhaps I should've worked out they were going to be small!

Which measurement do you use to tell what size a doll is?  Head to toe?  Around the waist?  However it's done, you can see the nappy just fits her, if I put it on the other baby doll I have here (no I don't play with them, one is from when my DGD was a toddler and the other I got at a thrift store to use for props if I make any baby stuff...honest!) she gets the worst case of plumbers crack possible.

So, at this point, I'm thinking "aaah crap, what size baby doll is TaShies' favourite?" so texting backwards and forwards between myself and DD, I establish that the baby in flavour, is even bigger than the big one I have....so making the rest of the nappies up is kind of pointless.

Moving along, I have a quick look online to see if I can locate a bigger pattern, and found one here, that explains to you how to measure the doll to make sure the diaper/nappy is a perfect fit.  So, by now, even though I have the dolls measurements, and I have a method to make the nappies the right size....I'm over it lol

Next, I thought I'd get working on the Doll carrier/bassinet from this tutorial, however, going on the baby doll measurements, it wasn't going to be big enough either, so even though I had all ready lost interest in doing all this baby doll stuff because of being so disheartened by the nappy, I started to design my own.....got the outer base cut out, and the lining piece cut out...then my goldfish/magpie memory span well and truly kicked in and I found myself finding scraps of fabric for a scrappy block swap I'm in on Facebook....lol

Here's the result of finding said scraps

You'll notice the the middle one on the bottom row isn't actually one of the scrappy strippy blocks....but a siggy block which is for a different swap....my Siggy block swap....the newest member wanted blue for her colour choice, and whilst I was going through my scrap baskets, I happened to find two x 4" blue squares which just happen to be the right size for a siggy block....found the 3 & 1/2" centre square and voila a siggy was also born.

So, FNSI wasn't exactly as productive as I'd thought it was going to be, but at least I did SOME sewing hey?  One of these FNSI's I'll be uber prepared, and will get stacks and stacks of sewing done....yeah right, a gal can dream can't she?

Yesterday (Saturday) I went to Renmark, Sth Australia, on a wee shopping spree for DGD's birthday stuff, and managed to find her a wee baby doll, some other odds and sods and my friendly neighbourhood next door stalker, Sharina, spied a toy travel cot, so that was quickly placed in the trolley, so will whizz up a quilt and pillow to go with that in the coming week.....in Dora Fabric!

What did you get done?  In the last couple of weeks, I got a special request quilt and laundry bag done for a very special Aussie Hero serving overseas at the moment.  I'll post a pic of it tomorrow for you, so please pop back and have a look, I'm very proud of our Aussie Heroes, and love being able to do something for them to show there's Aussies back home that appreciate them, if even only by wrapping them in a quilt and making their laundry easier to spot in a sea of laundry bags!

I've just signed up again!

I actually got some stuff sewn up last time, but couldn't really share pics as they were for swap gifts, this month I plan on sewing pressies for my DGD who turns 5 on 25th August....so I'll be able to share pics this time.  If you want to sign up for this great monthly event, please either click on the button on my right hand side bar to read a bit more about it, or click HERE (it'll open in a new window) to actually go directly to the sign up spot.  Leave me a message to say you're joining in, so I can check out what you've made this month get ideas for next month lol  Happy FNSI'ing.

Easy X Block video example

Aussie Hero Quilts (and laundry bags): All at sea!!! and Quilts of the Week 10 Aug

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