Basket full of Flowers

My friends birthday is today and I wanted to send her a special postcard to celebrate and I thought what could be better than a basket of flowers that is always in bloom.  I used my newest toys, two small yo yo makers, to make the flowers for this postcard.  My daughter even came over to help make the tiny ones.  They are fun and easy to make with the yo yo makers and I sewed them up while I waited for my turn at Scrabble on facebook.  :)  Then I added tiny buttons, poked some green leaves around the flowers, hand stitched the basket down, did some free motion quilting on the background and put a traditional quilt binding for the edging.  I love it.  It is one of my favorite cards.

I love collecting craft tools just as much as fabric and even though I haven't been collecting as much fabric lately, I still have been collecting tools.  These yo yo makers are my newest collection item.  I bought two larger circle yo yo makers last summer, and this past Christmas I received a flower and a heart yo yo maker - thanks Mom!  In January I bought the two smallest circle yo yo makers when they were half off at Hancock Fabrics.  Clover, the company who makes these tools, still has more for me to collect though:  the butterfly, the shamrock, the very largest circle (the Jumbo circle), and their newest design, the Oval.  You can see them all here.   If you are interested, Lazy Girl Designs has a wonderful pictorial tutorial on how to use these yo yo makers.

Side Tracked

This past Saturday I went to the Hobby Lobby.  It is one of my favorite stores and I can browse there for hours on end. But the main reason for my trip this time was so my daughter could get some more beads for her jewelry making hobby.   I hadn't planned on buying anything for myself and I almost made it out of the store empty handed, but that quickly changed when I got to the fabric section.  Now, I didn't get any fabric, and I wasn't even tempted, except for that pink paisley which I just patted and walked away from. Instead, I found something I felt I couldn't live without when I went to the discounted notions wall.  Hanging near the bottom I found a cross stitch kit on sale.  Why it was in the fabric section instead of the cross stitch section I don't know and normally I am not tempted with a cross stitch kit, but this one had pretty beads in it and it was a picture of a quilted cat named Scarlett done by Jim Shore.  It was discounted from $15 to $5.  So I snatched it and her friend Petunia up and headed to the cash register.  I halted progress on the three current projects I am working on and have only been cross stitching for the past couple days.  I am so excited to finish this cat that I do believe it will be one of my few projects that gets started and finished without me doing any other projects in between.  Now if I could just do that with all my projects and not get side tracked with new ones, I might not have so many UFO's.

More Mosaic Color Play

These are the three latest blocks I made for the IFQ mosaic color play swap.  For this swap, my partners sent me the center square and I added my fabrics to it in order to create the mosaic block.

The top two blocks were sent to Australia and the bottom went to GA.   As soon as the rose garden block gets received, I will be able to sign up again.  I have a goal to make and receive 12 blocks total so I can make a quilt for myself.  So far I have participated in 6 swaps, so I am  halfway there.