Therese's Quilt

First of all... yikes! The winner of the CSN giveaway that was supposed to be announced oh, about a month ago, is PAM! Congratulations, Pam! I'll send you an email with the info.

Recently I had the honor of making a quilt for a sweet little girl who will come from Africa to her newly adopted home here in The States. Her name is Therese and I really, really hope she loves her new quilt.

A lot of the fabrics are from MacKenzie of Dena Designs. There is one Kaffe Fassett print in there to add a little "African Flare" and one from Red Letter Day of Lizzy House.

I used a lavender chenille backing and made the binding from leftovers scraps of the quilt fabric. I can't remember if I've ever wrote about it before, but it IS possible to do free-motion-quilting with a chenille or minky backing. The secret is doing your FMQ with just the quilt top and batting -- NO FMQ'ING WITH THE BACK! Then do some straight-line/stitch in the ditch to attach the backing and you have the best of both worlds!

In other random sewing news...

For the first time ever I've entered a swap, the Hoop Up! Stitch and Send Swap on Flickr. This was a nice challenge for me. There are several groups of four people that each give their theme. Then each swapper creates something based on that theme and sends it to the person who wanted it. So not only is it fun to create something for another person but also you get some adorable little surprise in your mail as well! My swappees wanted a mandala and bird in a birdcage:

There was also a cereal design but I seem to have lost it for the time being! It is on the flickr link if you really have to see it. My designs are all done and sent and now I just sit back and wait to see what my partners stitched up for me! I highly recommend getting involved in a swap. There are quilt block swaps, pillow, coaster, and embroidery swaps... pretty much anything you can think of. It's a fun and relatively fast little project that helps to enhance your sewing skills. Plus it's always fun to meet new friends out there who don't look at you like you're a senior citizen just because you can use a needle and thread.

Happy Thanksgiving to all you US readers!!