More Christmassy stuff and Scrappy Sunday :)

After church today, we delivered the advent calendar I made yesterday for the 3 daughters of our friends. The pockets are a bit on the small side so would only take one chocolate so DH bought an extra tub so that the sisters who's day it isn't to pick still get to eat a chocolate too ... bless him :)

I wanted to jazz it up a little bit so added some scrappy binding from my leftover binding basket:

Was about to leave for church when realised I hadn't taken a photo, hence DH coming to the rescue:

And the back:

This afternoon, I made four more scrappy blocks, still just totally at random picking up a scrap trimming it and adding another until there are 7 rows on each half log cabin, then trimming down to 7":

Still got loads and loads ... and loads of scraps left! In fact, I wonder if me looking at them has actually made them multiply because even after making 20 blocks, the pile is not going down :)

Next week, I'm going to a Christmas Meal with colleagues and there's the obligatory Secret Santa to participate in so I decided to make a mini Pants Bag which I'll fill with chocs. I took lots of photos today (I may write a tutorial next week, if you'd like one?), here's just a few for now:

And made entirely from scraps from dear niece's Christmas Throw (which just needs basting and that'll be quilted next weekend!) 

Linking up with Karen at Sew Many Ways ... lots of loveliness to look at :)

My first Quilting Bee :)

Thank you so much for all your lovely comments on my 'new' sewing room - I showed them all to DH and he was really chuffed :)

So, today I got to sew up there for the first time in over a month ... yay! And just in time. I have been invited to join a small virtual quilting bee organised by Maria @ sew love to sew. I haven't taken part in a Bee before so was a little nervous when Fran @ PatchyRose emailed me to see if I was up for it. Maria has done a great job organising it all and has kept it very simple - just as well with me involved!

This is how it will work: we each make our own strip at a width of 40.5" (depth and design to be decided by ourselves) and then post it to the next person on the list who adds their depth and design to it and so on until it comes home to you with all 6 strips attached into a quilt top. Maria is encouraging us not to buy new fabric but choose from our stash.

So, I set about creating my strip today. I want this to be a no pressure, fun experience so I adopted tried to adopt a more casual approach than usual to my fabric choices and block designs. I still 'auditioned' different fabrics ... I have a Pom Pom Layer Cake I've wanted to cut into for like forever, then I thought about using bold, darker accent colours like navy and black or a flower theme maybe or ... oh, this was me being not so 'casual' after all!

Hmmm, moving onto block design; that might make it easier to choose from all those colours. Now I have all my books on easy display and a little seating area to comfortably read them in, I picked up a few and perused ... and paused and perused ... and ... an hour has now passed ... oh my!

Sometimes you can over-engineer things, don't you think? JFDI, Jennifer, JFDI ... so I did. Here's my strip - 8" x 40.5" - a few different blocks in yellow and PINK! Well, are you really surprised: 

Nell just had to join me ... we re-covered my ironing block yesterday - she tells me she was just trying it out:

I pass my strip onto Amy next week and I will be receiving Fran's and we will have 6 weeks in each round so plenty of time to choose fabrics and make blocks for the next strip.

Here's all the lovely ladies:

Maria @ sew love to sew

Amy @ Cloud CouCou Crafts

Fran @ PatchyRose 

Julie @ Mack and Mabel

Sarah @ Quilt Candy 

And me :)

I am so looking forward to getting to know my fellow Bees better and to working on their strips - it's quite exciting, hey! And Maria even designed a little button for us: