Fabulous News & Mail!!

I have had such good news over the last few days - firstly Kristy C awards me a "you make my day" award (thanks Kristy - that really means a lot to me!), then Cecile at Unique Stitching emails me to say I won second prize (General Division) in the Cancer Quilt Challenge with my Falling Gum Leaves quilt, then last night I find my friend Annie has finally caved in and started a blog and today Sephi has awarded me the same award. Plus I received two beautiful ATCs in the mail today!! Needless to say I'm smiling and humming cheerful tunes.

Note: I am thinking I maybe won a prize as a reward for all those seed stitches on my quilt - I don't know that I would have started if I had known how long it would take to cover the whole (little) quilt!

So to start with the award - the rules for the “You Make My Day” award are to re-present it to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blog land. Let them know through email or by posting a comment on their blog so they can pass it on. Beware you may get the award several times, and if you do, consider yourself really, really loved. So to pass it on and keep the love going ~ here are 10 of the 100's of blogs that keep me inspired and bring a smile to my face. Check them out when you have a few minutes... perhaps there are some new friends to be made!

Here are my 10 - all are creative bloggers in various media and some are blogs that I don't even comment on (now why exactly is that when I feel as if they are part of my life?). Like everyone else I could easily list a lot more!

Dale Rollerson

Creative Everyday

Janet

Doreen

Purple Missus

Jane

Kelly Rae

Sharon

Tricia

Keron

And to share some recent creativity - here is my fibre ATC trade for Susan Lenz's Cyber Fyber exhibition. I am fairly new to surface embellishment and the experimental side of the fibre arts so I tried some things that I haven't had much experience at. First I used the embellisher to felt a whole pile of beautiful brightly coloured wool roving(s?) to a base piece of felt, then I embellished purple chiffon over the top (it was actually an antique scarf as it was one I used when I was in my teens and used old fashion curlers!). The surface actually looked quite interesting at that point but I felt the need for some glitz...so I ironed two colours of hot fix Angelina fibres together and fused them to the chiffon/felt using Misty Fuse. They look nice but it was probably a bit of a waste of all that wool roving and felting underneath!! So then I added some text stamping and some petal outlines in gold machine stitching and sewed on some seed beads. I learnt heaps in the process! It looks a lot more sparkly in real life.

(From Annie Normark/Sequanna)

And today's mail included traded fibre ATCs from Annie (Sequanna) and Doreen - just gorgeous!! Thanks so much - I love trading!

Which reminds me - Rebecca in NZ - you sent me an "anonymous" comment saying you wanted to trade but I need you to email me so we can exchange addresses -I have saved the ATC you wanted and will hold it for a few more days...

(From Doreen)

And I am just doing the final bits on my February "Colour" Journal quilt - hopefully I will finish it within the next couple of days. It has ended up a bit wonky (shape-wise) because I decided to try the sleeve technique for backing it - hmmm, that one is obviously going to need some practice...

Here is a photo (snapped in the rain at dusk on last week's road trip) of the new entry statement at Wiluna - it is celebrating the Indigenous heritage and presence in the region and is quite striking. Next time hopefully I will be able to take a properly composed shot (you know, one without the yellow rubbish bin and parked car in the background!)