Stamp Quilt Mail

 

I was so surprised to get the Stamp Quilt sew a long patch in the mail the other day.

Isn't that patch adorable? I love the '24 in the corner. Remember when stamps were that cheap? They're now .73¢ now. I was at the post office in my little town today and they had Run Out of stamps! Wild?! What? The postmaster was printing out postage on the tape for people.

I'm being good and not peeking in the envelope to check out the finisher charm because I haven't finished my Stmap Quilt top yet. 

Mail Surprises

Nice surprise mail arrived this weekend after we finally remembered to go to the PO box.

First a conference swag box from the recent SAQA conference. Nice stuff in there. Never thought that I’d someday be eating SAQA chocolate! Some nice stuff from the sponsors, including a Goddess Sheet from MistyFuse. Next time I fuse something, I'll try it out.

Second, I'd completely forgotten that I signed up for a Japanese charm swap from Sewtopia and Bunny's Designs. The setup was a little unusual to me, you bought a certain amount of fabric from Bunny's, they cut up all the fabrics that participating customers purchased and send out a great stack of squares to each person. It sounded like a good way to get a big range of Japanese fabrics. It's so fun to look through them all, I can't wait to use mine. I think I'll make my son Alex a quilt because he loves Japanese designed stuff. I'll put the all up on the design wall and take a picture of the great variety later. All the anime style stickers are super cute too.

I also bought a 1/2 yard of the tiger knit to use in a t-shirt or tank top. It just cracks me up for some reason.  As well as this interesting crossword fabric too. I thought it might be fun to embroider letters in the crossword with my new sewing machine.

New Quilting Design Book

 

I’d forgotten that I had preordered Christa Watson’s new book, 99 Machine-Quilting Designs and there it was waiting for me in my PO Box! A nice surprise for sure. And look she sent along a free pattern and a cute pin that says: I ♥️Quilting. The book is great, very clear illustrations and great ideas. Even though I've been free motion quilting for a long time now, it's still good to look at new examples and ways of coming up with quilt designs. I'm going to attempt to implement some of this when I machine quilt my Lone Round Robin quilt. Will I use 99 designs in one quilt? Probably not, but maybe I'll use 10 out of 99, one for each round? 

This pattern, Terrace Tiles is FQ friendly which sounds good to me. It's a simple yet really interesting design.

Red Sun=Stay Inside

 

The sky was weird with all the smoke from the zillions of fires around our state. We're happy to find out today that"our fire" is 83% contained. Good thing, because the firefighters need to move on and save some of the Sierras and elsewhere. Dire. This morning it was so dark when I woke up, I thought I'd woken up too early (which almost never happens) but it was just the smoke layer added to the fog layer. And I was cold, finally cold, because the weather changed. ahhhhh what a relief. So staying inside is a big part of the plan for the next few days. A new wives' saying: If the Sun Is Red Stay Inside.

We did finally get some of our packages from the Post Office, which was nice. The mail was redirected to Scotts Valley at first, but then they evacuated, so then it was sent all the way down to Watsonville. But they weren't giving out packages and there were long lines, so I didn't bother driving all that way from where we were evacuated. 

So...it was nice to have something nice to open. These were things I'd ordered In The Before Times. I'd used up my Shapeflex on the Cotton Candy Pouches so I'd ordered more. I wanted to make some more masks and I wanted to get the right size bias tape maker for the ties. That was my least favorite step in making all the masks I've done, ironing the fabric strips.

I also ordered some soft flat cotton twill tape to use for ties and some very soft satiny elastic for around the head or ears types. Trims on Wheels has good deals. They even have some fabric for good prices.

Now that it's cool enough for me to use my iron, I'm getting some sewing done today.

Yay for Good Mail!

Participating in swaps is so fun, this one is a swap from the wonderful community at Create A Connection. Sundries Sublime sent me this journal, thanks Sundries! (g)

I received the coolest journal in the mail this week, hooray! Here is a picture of how it came wrapped. I actually admired it for a day, just because it looked so beautiful.

And here is how it looked after I opened it:

Don't you just love that sentiment? Here it is in case you can't read it:
"If you asked me what I came into this world to do. I will tell you: I Came to Live Out Loud." - Emile Zola.
What an absolutely perfect one for me. Thanks for the reinforcement, I needed that!
Boy is it ever nice to get good stuff in the mail, what a treat.