Catching up at home

I managed to get everything unpacked after the Loch Lomond Quilt Show and stowed away in the appropriate places. The quilts are back on their table and I'm getting ready to pack other ones up and mail them out to various exhibitions.

I also realized the draw was done for the 4 x 4 Mingle on the MailartbyDesign Yahoo group. The theme for May was Play and my contribution is called Childs' Play. It's going in the mail to Linda E tomorrow who is my partner this month. I used a fabric collage, in fact the same one as I made for Theresa's album if you can still remember that far back! I added this lovely transparency of a girl with a bird in a cage ( from www.divasdeste.com) and the words are done with the Dymo label machine. Beaded around the edges with beads in the colours found in the collage.

I thought I had no detail of the ATC I swapped yesterday during my ATC class at the Loch Lomond Show but have discovered I've been more organized than I gave myself credit for so here it is! The words are stamped on a pale space-dyed background, pieces of vintage lace were sewn around the 4 corners. Then I added seed stitching around the words with a space-dyed thread, and finally beaded the edges of the lace. The lady who received it in the swap has already e-mailed me to say how much she enjoyed the class, which is really lovely!

Finally I did a bit of hand quilting on the large quilt I'm working on at the moment and it's really gorgeous to do a bit of pieceful stitching. I really miss it when I'm away as it enables me to just dream away and reach a place where I can simply concentrate on the joy of working on the big quilts. It will always remain my favourite part of being a quilter however lovely it is to have occasional away days such as the Loch Lomond Show this week. All the enthousiasm for my work does really spur me on to get on with this next one!!