Finish-a-long 2019 - a nice surprise

Back in the summer, I had a surprise email from the organisers of the 2019 Finish-A-Long to say that I won one of the prizes for Q2. Being in the UK, there is always the possibility that with vouchers for American suppliers, you might end up spending more in shipping and custom charges than the voucher itself. Luckily this was a very generous prize and so right from the start I factored in the likely custom charge when deciding what to get.

My voucher was from Sew Sweetness and I spent a while looking at the website to see what I needed and what would be the best value items taking into consideration shipping/customs. Sara from Sew Sweetness was very helpful with questions I had about the different shipping options and once I had finally decided what to get and placed my order, the items arrived in the UK very quickly.

I chose a mix of items that I needed (a hot ruler for pressing hems etc which will be an improvement on the cardboard templates I usually use), items that were better value than in the UK (long double-headed zips for bag making), and some items that I wanted to try and where ideally priced to use the full value of the voucher (Tulip applique needles, a magnetic needle/pin/scissor keepers, and some Clover wonder clips). With some careful planning, less than a fifth of the voucher value went on shipping and the cost of all these items to me was a customs charge of ~£18.

I’d like to thank the sponsors and organisers of the 2019 Finish-A-Long and I better get sewing to have some finishes to show for Q4.

(For 2019, I am trialling a version of this website on WordPress to see if it is more mobile-friendly  for commenting and posting. The WordPress version of this post is available here.)

Autumn themed mug rugs

With winter approaching, there’s just time to show you a mug rug and couple of coasters I made for an autumn swap.

I used Paula Doyle’s mini mosaic technique which I learnt at a Festival of Quilts workshop back in 2016. The mosaic pieces start off at 1” square and are fused onto an interfacing backing. Once the seams have been stitched, they finish at half an inch square.

For the mug rug, I just used a narrow binding, but for the coasters I added a border before binding.
 

The quilting on the mug rug was stitch in the ditch around each leaf shape and I did the same on the coasters but added an echo line of quilting around the outside of the leaf.
 

The swap was supposed to be for a single item, but I received two sets of mats!

 (All of which are far too pretty to use.)

(For 2019, I am trialling a version of this website on WordPress to see if it is more mobile-friendly  for commenting and posting. The WordPress version of this post is available here.)