Finished Swap Quilt, Swap Til You Drop, or STUD, as it's known...

 This is what I was talking about yesterday- I made a small quilt for my parter, Cindy, who made that fab Nosey Parker pirate quilt for me.  Cindy's favorite things were - 

So I made her this-

 The label rolls up and goes into the little rum bottle and hangs from a small hook on the back of the binding. 

 Since one of her favorite things is her cat, Took, I incorporated him (slightly tanner than his usual color) and his favorite things into the quilt, too....

 He's snoozing in the sunshine, dreaming of canned cat food, his litter box, his favorite scratching post and his MOM...  Most of which he has, right there on his island, the biggest litter box in the world, but all he really wants is his Mom... 

 So he's floating her off a message for her to send the boat to come and get him, 

that he's ready to go home now.  The boat is on the way, Cindy was missing her littlest of boys!

And I added a few little things to her package.  It's been delivered and well received, apparently the whole family likes it.  :)  And that makes me really happy!

 

 This was a fun swap and a challenging quilt.  It measures 9" x 12" and it was a bit fiddly to work on.  I messed up the first cat I did, so the whole thing nearly went into the trash after 2 days of working on it, but my husband convinced me it could be saved, so I spent about 3 hours picking out 5000 little stitches and I redid the cat and added the towel and it made a huge difference in this quilt.  There are a couple of things I would do differently if I was doing another one like this, like I'd leave off the seagull because I don't think it's adding much to it, but otherwise, I'm pretty happy overall. 

Doll Quilt Swap 10- Received and Sent and more!

 I received a most wonderful doll quilt from the DQS 10 swap!  Louise, aka lululollylegs,  lives in Melbourne Australia.  She made and sent to me a fabulous flamingo quilt with 3D feathers and it is just the most wonderful thing ever!  Each of those feathers was made individually, carefully placed and then layered onto the bird and sewn down by hand.  The entire thing is hand quilted with the most perfect of stitches and if you click on her link, you can see the details better than my photos show you.  The quilting in the water around the flamingo's leg is just incredible and so fun!

 Look how well it goes with our stuff on the verandah!

 And she sent me wonderful extras, too! Aboriginal art playing cards, Australian fabrics that are just divine, and a great note.  

 The back of the quilt is gorgeous and she made a fun label for it, too.  Love her drawing of a flamingo!  I have a real thing for flamingo and actually go by that name at several message boards (which she didn't know) so this quilt is just super-extra-special to me.  Thank you so much, Louise!  You are a sweet lady and I am thrilled that you made this for me!  I can't leave it on the verandah all the time as I don't want it to get dirty, but I will hang it here occasionally when we have company over, so I can show it off!  The rest of the time, it'll be upstairs in my work room area so I can see it all the time!  Thank you so much, again!

And now I can show you what I sent to my partner in the swap, Monika, in Germany.  This is the complete Rainbow Village.  The houses and the rainbow are removable so she can move them around, rearrange them, etc.  The sun spells out her name, an idea that I got from my friend Pam at uberstitch.  She did that on a small quilt for another friend and I asked her if I might use her idea on this quilt and she very graciously didn't mind. 

 

Close up of the sun-

And here is the entire package of what I sent Monika- one of my patterns, some text fabric, some house fabric (which is like the back of the quilt) some perle cotton thread in variegated colors, a snail tape measure and some tiny metal tags that say "made with love".  Since I was sending it so far away, I went to a box store and purchased THE most perfect box!  It was 20" long and 6" wide and 6" deep, so I was able to loosely roll the quilt and place it in the box, along with all the other stuff, too, with room to spare.  That was so much better than tightly rolling it and shoving it into a tube!  This way I could include some extras without damaging anything.

I had a lot of fun making this quilt for Monika and NO stress, because I consider her to be my friend already and it's so much easier making things for people you know as opposed to making for a "stranger".  She sent me the nicest thank you note, too, so I'm really happy that she likes it.

And- I was in a STUD swap- that stands for Swap Til You Drop- my first time in this swap.  The theme for this month was "My Favorite Things" and I told my partner, Cindy aka CASharp,  that my favorite things were bright colors, tropical, my white cat Nosey Parker, pirates, and the beach.  (I think those were the 5.)  Rules are- you must use at least 2 of the things in the quilt.  Well!  I think she used all 5!  

She made this wonderful pirate cat quilt, titled "Arrrr, I Be Nosey Parker!"  lol  LOOK at how cute this is!  The cat is soft and fuzzy as she used Minkee for it, wow!  And she's wearing a blinged out eye-patch over her beautiful green eye.  There's even a treasure chest pinned on!  How adorable this is!

I love everything about this, even the back is gorgeous!   The quilting is a great split leaf philodendron, my favorite tropical leaf!  It measures a nice 18" x 18".  Love that patchwork border, too!

And she sent SO much loot with this- a wonderful quilted snap bag, a tiny quilted pincushion, matching pins, a flamingo bookmark, and....

... a mug rug that spells out my nickname, Sooz, in Scrabble tiles!  :)  How fab is that?!  Cute little hula dancers, huh? Love all this stuff and her fabrics are so fun!

I am such a lucky girl.  Cindy really spoiled me.  Thanks so much, Cindy!  

Of course, I made something for her, too.  Her favorite things are sunshine, clear bright colors, laughter, her little cat Tookie and blue skies.  I can't wait to show you what I made for her!  She might get it today, so I'll show you soon.  Stay tuned.  And thanks for looking at all my show and tell stuff! 

Yesterday was a fun day..... and thank you all....

Let me start first by saying thank you to everyone for all the sweet

condolences on the loss of our dog, Paisley. It's been a week now and
we're getting used to the fact that she's gone but it still feels weird
without her in our lives. It was so kind of you all to respond and offer your sympathies, I tried to thank you all personally but wasn't able
to for some of the anon or "no-reply" peeps.
Please just know that I appreciated every single one of them.

Now, to yesterday- the mail lady brought 2 packages to the house! One was a quilt book I had ordered thru Ebay, saving over $10, which I liked. It's "Greetings from Tucsadelphia" by Lizzie B. Cre8tive. It's got lots of fun applique patterns in it and even a recipe or 2. But the other box- well, let's just say "WOWEE WOW WOW", shall we? It came all the way from Buenos Aires, Argentina from a friend named Sandy. I didn't know it, but she had my name in a scrappy pincushion swap over at Flickr! I made and sent the turtle, remember? I thought that was cute. Sandy taught me all about CUTE with a capital C!

This is what I found when I opened the biggest package in the box- a little white cat in a pink bikini and a rainbow colored pincushion with a velcro dot in the middle. Interesting, yes? Wonder what that velcro is for?

OH! It's to attach it to the next largest piece in the box, turned out to be a tree trunk on a piece of sand!

Now, tell the truth- is this not the cutest thing EVER????? Sandy made me a little miniature Nosey Parker Goes to Florida pincushion set! It's a rainbow palm tree on a bit of beach! Un-freakin'-believable. She even has her own little towel which doubles as a needle case. Sandy made this up all on her own, she had no pattern and she had to work it out so that it was sturdy and would support the tree top and built it an underwire frame and everything. This was no easy feat! I am so totally impressed. And grateful!

She also sent me some fabulous Kaffe Fassett fabric, 3D rainbow stickers and a lovely handmade, custom card with a long hand-written note about how this came to fruition. You wouldn't believe how giddy and happy I was- I needed this morale boost- it showed me what a lovely friend Sandy is to me and what a kind and dear lady she must be, to go to all this trouble for me! AND- I got what has to be the best pincushion in the entire swap.

For size perspective, you can see the real NP checking out her newest competition. The little fabric NP is quite tiny and so dear! I just love this and keep pinching myself because it's so dreamy. I love things with pieces parts, I adore things that are rainbow colored and I love all things tropical. And of course, I love Nosey Parker to bits, so you tie them all together into one package and I damn near fainted!


I tried to stay busy last week, to distract myself and I ended up finishing 2 little quilts.

No bees, no honey..... No work, no money..... that's a saying from somewhere, don't know where, but I like it. :) It's also the name of this little quilt.

It measures about 12" square and is for me and the other one, below, is for the Doll Quilt Swap. It's about 24" x 16". It's called a spiderweb quilt.


The recipient's name is blocked out so she can't accidentally find out that it's for her before it arrives in her mailbox in about another month.


And what's a spiderweb quilt without a spider? :) Don't freak, it's rubber and squishy and fun to squeeze. This spider is my friend, he eats scary snakes!

I also finished up 9 more sewing caddies and they're all in my Etsy shop. And I made 9 cat collars, but that was no big deal. Murphy and Parker both lost one this week, those rotten kids.

So this week has been better than last week. Thank you all again, very much, for the kindness you've shown me.