My daughter's pincushion swap, a baby quilt in a day, and I won some giveaways

Well, My daughter wanted to do a swap since I've been participation in so many. She had only done a little bit of sewing. She wanted to make a crazy patch pincushion. She chose all the fabrics herself. Then I showed her how to use the iron, and used fusible web to put her little pieces of fabric to a basic square piece of material. I watched her closely during this process. Then I taught her different hand embroidery stitches for her to use on the edges. She did all the work herself. The only thing I helped her with was making the knots and the blind stitching to close the pincushion when it was stuffed. I'm so impressed at how well she did. She is swapping it with my Mom. Who also had never done a swap before. She was just as excited as my daughter. So my daughter is sending her pincushion in the mail today. Yesterday, My mother-in-law told me she was going back to Northern Ontario on Friday to go to a baby shower for one of her nieces. I asked her why she waited so long to tell me...I would have made her a baby quilt. Well, since I was off work yesterday, I decided to just whip up a simple baby quilt with stuff I had. So I got it all done in about 4 hours. I think that's quite good. I even machine stitched the binding. I had never done that before. It turned out nice. I wouldn't use that method too often, but it's nice to know I can manage it at crunch time. I hope you like it. It's very simple. I tried the wavy quilting that I've seen others used. I like it. All I had to do was wash the quilt. Then it would have that nice crinkly look.

On another note, I won two giveaways this week. I think it's been my lucky week. I won some wonderful bag patterns (package #3) from Carol's Crafty Creations. I'm so excited there are five beautiful patterns in the bundle. I can't wait to reason them. Carol has a great blog you should go check it out.

The second giveaway that I won was also amazing. I feel so fortunate to have won the entire Authentic pattern collection from Sweetwater. I entered their giveaway on there blog. The collection has 8 patterns in it. They have the cutest blog called makelifesweet. They often have giveaways, and tutorials. You have to go check it out.

Happy Stitching!!!

Ariane :o)