**If by any chance you are my mother, stop reading and LOOK AWAY now!!**


My son says it every time he finishes or wants to show us something, so to borrow his current favourite phrase...

Ta Da!
Here is my finished Dead Simple Quilt!



I thoroughly enjoyed being part of Lynne's Dead Simple Quilt Along over at Lily's Quilts and I learned a lot about solids and palettes, so thank you so much to Lynne for running such a fun and different QAL and thank you to everyone that took part for the inspiration and encouragement!

I did some organic straight line free motion quilting and it's not bad for a first attempt, although far from perfect!

 

I used Kona Charcoal for the binding and a grey thread for the quilting because I wanted to give it a modern feel and make it a bit more masculine so my step Dad can use it too!!
It's really hard to show the colours of the solids so I also took some pictures indoors to get an idea of how it changes in the light:



And the little girl couldn't keep her hands off it!! But this one is a Christmas present for my mum!


I'm very excited by this finish, I loved working with the solid fabrics (with a few patterns on the back) and really enjoyed putting it together. I'm linking up to finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, Finished It Friday at Stitching by Starlight and TGIFF, which is over at Bending Pins this week!




 


Finished it Fridays!

I'm also linking up to Leah at The Free Motion Quilting Project because she's exploring modern quilting and I think this is a modern quilt!

Yes I am that proud!! ;)

That's it on the making front, apart from my aforementioned son's school were raising money for Children In Need today so they were allowed to wear spots to school! This is easily done with hair accessories for a girl, but a boy?! So this is the result:


Lastly but most excitingly (what??!!!)... I had a good post and news day!

This gorgeous fabric arrived from the very kind Kaelin over at The Plaid Scottie, she knew I couldn't get it here in the UK and I just adore her Sweet Caroline Quilt. Thank you so much Kaelin! It makes me smile so much :)


I also won 2 giveaways and found out today!! One is 8 products for my sewing kit from Korbond, I'm really looking forward to getting it (partly because it will be a nice surprise, can't quite remember what I picked but I spent ages choosing!). I entered this competition on the sewing directory and it's well worth checking out if you're in the UK, there's so much cool stuff on there!

The second giveaway was from Crazy Old Ladies, I was one of the winners of ten fat quarters of Emily's newest line for Michael Miller 'Hall of Fame'. It looks gorgeous and will be available to buy towards the end of January/February:



Just look at those plaids, stripes and hoops, I adore the numbers too!! I hope she doesn't mind me using the pictures but I had to share!! You can read more about it and Emily's design ideas here, she also has some great patterns so you should check it out :)
I've never had anything so new before and I'm super excited to receive it!! I loved her Going Coastal collection but haven't got my hands on any yet - those prints (esp. crabs and bottle caps) are calling to me though - maybe a treat to myself after Christmas?!

Oops, how could I forget... I did one more sewing thing, here's my fmq practice for Free Motion Friday at Fluffy Sheep Quilting:

front
back
I thought I would hate this but I actually had a lot of fun, all the encouragement you guys gave me last week meant I felt more relaxed and wasn't bothered about being perfect (good job too!!). I suck at travelling, whether it's straight lines or curves, I can't seem to go over myself properly - I'm sure I can get better though. I like the pattern, they are like little aliens (rather than water molecules, which they're meant to be!) but I enjoyed doing it and this could be fun on a kids quilt in a small area (unless you have a mountain of thread you need to use up!). Honestly I'm really looking forward to next weeks superstar, it looks amazing! If you've not tried free motion quilting this is a great way to try it and join in the fun, please go and take a look at Cindy's post to find out more about Free Motion Friday!

If you're still reading well done and sorry for the ramble, I'm so excited about all the goodies and I think that the universe is showing me I'm on the right path! I'm on my chocolate comedown now but I was harking on about how much I love quilting yesterday!! I've never been so lucky but then I've never been so grateful for finding a hobby that I love and bloggy friends who give me so much support. Thank you.