And the Winner Is...

I put the names for the fabric giveaway in my handy dandy retro tea canister, gave it a shake, and let my trusty assistant/husband draw the winner...

Sarah Craig wins the 1 yard of yellow floral vintagey fabric!  

Congrats, Sarah!  I know you will put it to good use in one of your many projects.  I'm only sorry it couldn't be a GO cutter, but maybe this is just one stop on a big lucky streak for you.  I hope so! 

BUT WAIT...THERE'S MORE!

Everyone who expressed an interest in this fabric—Michelle, Jane, Sue, Vicki, Mrs. Pyjamas, JKP, Jenny,  Sew Here We Are, and SewLindaAnn—is also getting 1/2 yard each!  

Why?  Because I like you!  And seriously, what am I gonna do with the remaining 9 yards otherwise?  Share the joy, I say.

Please email me your mailing addresses.  You can find my email in my profile.  Congratulations to all of you lucky winners!

I should mention this fabric does not appear to have been prewashed.  I will give it a light pressing, but anything else you want to do to it before you use it is your call, of course.

And to everyone who takes a few moments out of the day to read this little blip in the blogosphere, I sincerely thank you.  Your comments are always welcome and brighten my day!

Tortoise or Hare?

Which one are you when it comes to your sewing and quilting projects?
Tortoise here.

Yesterday, I worked on the Climbing Lanterns project. It might seem like this has been in the works forever, but compared to the one other fused and machine appliqued wall hanging I've done, I am working at lightning speed. The other one took 18 months.

On Friday, I cut out the brown kraft paper stems my daughter had drawn for me last week and laid them over the background to check proportions. I had also made a sample of one of the red lanterns. It all seemed fine.

Then I traced the paper pieces onto fabric, which had been lined with Wonder-Under, and cut them out.

I repositioned the pieces onto the backing again, and tonight I will fuse them on. Ultimately, they will be machine appliqued in place.

Working on this reminded me of a project I finished in 2008 called "Three Water Lilies," from a pattern by Ann Fahl.

Check out her website and blog sometime. She does gorgeous work, and many of her designs are available as patterns. Her pattern says, "A Workshop in a Bag," and it is definitely a very well-written, step-by-step guide to making this kind of quilt.

By contrast is the current pattern I'm working from, which has only very basic instructions. But it was free, and what do you want for nothing?

So I found myself rereading Ann Fahl's instructions for the water lily quilt this morning, and I'm glad I did. I had forgotten her suggestion to use a tear-away stabilizer when doing the machine applique. Since I was going to the fabric store anyway for thread, I picked up a couple yards of stabilizer as well.

That is the status of the Climbing Lanterns project. Slow progress is being made, but progress nonetheless.