PIN IT TO WIN IT - FREE FABRIC

Randi who runs the wonderful store that is Freshly Squeezed Fabrics is running a ‘pin it to win it‘ contest, pin a bundle from her store and you get the amount of repins that equal the cost of the bundle you win it.

So I’ve chosen this bundle:

Pin It To Win It

Unfortunately I'm not as smart as some others and I couldn't link my photo to the Pin so I've made a link underneath which hopefully will work.

Now I need 30 repins to win this as it costs $30.00.  And I'd be delighted if you would repin it for me.  If you're playing along too just leave me a comment below and I will repin yours.

Don't forget about my giveaway courtesy of my newest sponsor who is 

The Intrepid Thread

which is right below this posting.

Until next time ...
Lots of Love
Patti xxx
American by birth and MOUTH but British in every other way

An Extraordinary Quilt + A GIVEAWAY

Well you know how when you get on the computer just to answer your emails and one of them leads you to other things on it and then 5 or 10 hours later you are still on the computer?  Well that happened to me the other day and I went trawling the internet because my arm is stil not got and I was bored of being a couch potato (in other words just sitting on my big fat backside watching tv) and I found this website through another website and it had THE most amazingly GORGEOUS MALORGEOUS quilt I think I've ever seen in my life.

The quilt is called The Full Monty, I wonder if Megan's British?  Nope she just likes the film as do I because it really is a great movie but actually not as great (and I LOVED the movie) as this quilt and it was made by Lucy and Norman (GREAT name by the way), who is Megan, and I thought I would share this gorgeousness with you because I'm highly unlikely ever to make anything quite this gorgeous so without further ado I present to you

 THE

FULL

MONTY

And it was made by Megan and this is what she had to say about it:

"This quilt is my biggest and most proud finish yet so please bear with me during this heavily-pictured post. And as a side note, if you've never seen the film The Full Monty, you should. Anyways, back to the quilt.

I started this way back when sometime last year after I received my copy of Material Obsession 2. I fell hard straight away for Sarah Fielke's pattern Maple Leaf Rag and knew it would be mandatory for  my overflowing scrap bucket."

Oh gosh I just realised you need scraps for this quilt.  Does this mean that Megan makes quilts and has scraps?  You bet your life she does.  She makes zillions of quilts so go on over to her blog after you have entered my giveaway and have a look at all her quilts and you can be gobsmacked too!  (GOBSMACKED = AMAZINGLY GREAT)

And now for the GIVEAWAY I promised you.  I am so excited I just can't tell you.  I got my first THREE Sponsors this week.  My first Sponsor is Julie who is the owner of The Intrepid Thread  is very generously giving to my followers

Avignon in Aqua by Riley Blake

this fat quarter bundle of Avignon in Aqua which is THE very latest collection from Riley Blake and I really really LOVE it.  Isn't it just gorgeous.  It is one of my two most favorite things in her store right now.  How can I say that?  Well I just can't because every time I look there are loads more of course because I am a fabriholic after all and must start using all this fabric instead of just collecting and stroking it.

My other favorite right now from Julie's store is the half yard bundle of Elements in Stormy Sea  I am so in love with this and if we weren't going away and I wasn't scared the postman (mailman) would leave it outside my front door, as he is so prone to do, and it would get stolen, or alert the thieves that we are away, I would so order both of them right now as well as loads of other fabric she has.  Oh gosh if him upstairs (DH) didn't make such a fuss every time more fabric came into this house I would buy so much more of it, but he yells and I hate yelling.

In order to be in with a chance of winning all you have to do is:
1.  Go on to The Intrepid Thread store and come back and tell me what YOU like the best
2.  Go to Julie's Blog and subscribe to her Newsletter for a second chance and come back and leave me a comment saying you have done this
3. Become my follower on this website and come back for a third time and tell me you have joined my follower list

That's it really and I shall be drawing the winner on Friday October 5, 2012 at 9p.m. my time (GMT) because that is when I come home from my much needed holiday and I hope my arm is better from resting it so that I can cut and sew again.

So good luck to everyone and please don't buy all the fabric I want.

Until next time ...
Lots of Love
Patti xxx
American by birth and MOUTH but British in every other way

Dumb and Dumber

I'm not sure which one I am but I am definitely one of them.  Do you remember a few posts ago I couldn't remember where I had seen a quilt made with 5"squares (or there abouts) made of patterned cotton fabric and  squares of Essex Dyed Linen in Flax because that's all Rachel ever uses - see I got that part right if, in fact, I actually said that.  And (yes I know I'm not supposed to start a sentence with a preposition but I am so sue me) I was so sure it was posted by somebody here in England?  Well it wasn't!!  It was a quilt made by none other that Rachel Hauser whose blog is Stitched in Color and it also her class that I was so very sorry I hadn't signed up for at the beginning of the summer.  Well here is her quilt

This isn't the original quilt I saw but a new

one which is on her blog right now

and it's called Scattered Gems

and here are the blocks it is made from

and if you want to make one for yourself just go to Rachel's blog <---- link that will take you straight to the wonderful tutorial she made for these gorgeous blocks so go on and have a look and enjoy and now I can use the 2 yards of Essex Dyed Linen in Flax

Until next time ...
Lots of Love Patti xxx
American by birth and MOUTH but British in every other way

I am just soooo bad

And I promised and everything.  And I just couldn't keep to it.  Well you see it was like this.  Last week I was on Etsy and just happened to see these

for sale.  They were from Sew-Fantastic De-Stash sale and I just had to have one of them.  Just one and it was so inexpensive when you think how much fabric costs in England.  Even with postage costs I don't think it came to more than $20.00 for 2 yards of fabric and the owner of the store Terri was really nice and even wrote and told me that the listing was wrong and the bags weren't full of fat quarters but usable scraps and she was so right.  I just love everything I got from her.  All such really yummy fabrics.

Then yesterday I actually remembered that it was talknt#2 on Twitter.  About an hour into Talk Night we were discussing selvedges and I said that it would take me a really long time to get all the selvedges I would need for the quilt I wanted to make when somebody (sorry can't remember who) said that there were some for sale on Etsy so before you could say computer I was over there and bought these

from ReFabulous2 for the paltry sum of 

$9.97 including postage

I mean aren't they yummy but I'm sure I upset somebody and for that I apologise and I just wish I could remember who it was.  I am seriously going to have to go through what I said yesterday to find out who it was but I am really sorry if you were going to buy them.  But I do love them and as soon as I get them they are going to become part of a string quilt which I love doing.

Until next time ...
Lots of Love Patti xxx
American by birth and MOUTH but British in every other way

I just have to share some awesomeness

I have found THE most wonderful website quite by mistake.

Okay how many of you have seen a tutorial that you just love but whoever has taken the time and patience to do this for us hasn't put it in pdf form or in a form where you can print it without saving it as a pdf or word document?

Well I bought the full blown adobe version of pdf so I could save what I wanted without having to worry about this.  Did I need to do this?  NO WAY JOSE!!!

What I found was this website http://www.printfriendly.com/ and all you have to do is

1.  Go to www.printfriendly.com and save it into your favorites because you will need it a lot
2.  Go back to the website you want to save the tutorial from
3.  Copy the url (that's the address in your top bar) of the website with the tutorial you want to copy - you can see it highlighted at the top of the screen

just like I wanted to select this so I could copy it for you to see.  To copy the address or url what you have to do is

1. Put your curser anywhere in the address (or url
2. Single left click on it and it should be highlighted
3. press the Ctrl + C button on your computer at the same time (that's the cmd button on a Mac plus the C at the same time)
4. The address will be copied but be very careful NOT to copy anything else.  That is why I told you to bookmark Print Friendly before we started

4.  Then go to http://www.printfriendly.com/ that you have previously saved and

1. Press the Ctrl + V and the (or cmd + V at the same time if you have a Mac like me) and the web address that you have copied will be pasted into that empty box
2. On the right of the box that you have just pasted the address into there is a box which says 'print preview' so just single left click on this button and ...

5.  You will be taken to another screen that looks like this (I just pressed the no thanks button on the almost top of the screen on the right because as of yet I haven't done any tutorials so I don't need this on my website)  HOLD ON - this is a tutorial - albeit not a quilting tutorial but it's a tutorial so maybe I do need it.

where you will have a choice to 

1. Print, 
2. PDF or 
3. Email

There are other choices there too which are:

1. Text Size
2. Remove the Images which can be awesome if you just want printed text like I did with something else I saved

The whole process was totally painless and you will have the tutorial just the way you want to but didn't know how before.  I wanted to save the tutorial above and I did it as a pdf so I can either print it out if I want to or just look at it on my computer or any combination thereof.

If you have any questions about any of this just leave a question here and I will do my best to answer it for you.  But I can honestly say this is the easiest thing I have ever done and trust me I have done a lot of things in my time.

Until next time ... 

Lots of Love Patti xxx
American by birth and MOUTH but British in every other way

P.S. I just found out that if you put the Print Friendly bookmark in your Toolbar so it is visible all the time when you are on a website where you want to make a tutorial into a pdf or copy it or email to yourself all you have to do is stay where you are and click on the Print Friendly bookmark and it does it for you and will save you heaps of time.

Fabric

Fabric is just so horrible expensive in this adopted country of mine but sometimes you have to weigh out how much the postage is going to cost you from the States for the fabric you want and if you think it will slip by the British Post Office people who have this horrible charge they put on top of charging you the VAT.  Now please don't get me wrong I pay the VAT, prices in England are inclusive of 20% VAT (Value Addded Tax) but it's the £8.00 ($12-$13) handling fee I have the problem with.  I mean the VAT can come to like £3.00 or £4.00 but the handling fee bumps it right up.

Anyway last week I decided to join in Lori's Bee In My Bonnett Row Along and I needed some fabric like NOW - yeah I know like a hole in the head I needed it.  Lori said that for the first row the fabric needed to be small prints and I really don't buy small pints as I generally like larger prints and plains.  And anyway, most of my stash is just too good - okay it's not really but I have this horrible thing of having to SAVE things.  What am I saving them for?  I don't know!!!  No idea!!  Anyway I bought 4 fat quarters of fabric from Celtic Fusion here in England and here is what I got:

Anthology fabrics Flying tree bird menagerie with trees

Anthology fabrics Flying tree tiny flower in red

I actually bought both of these

The one on the right is 

Riley Blake Happier birds

and the one on the left is

Riley blake happier Scandinavian flowers

Now why couldn't I wait I hear you ask yourselves.  Well Celtic Fusion were having a sort of sale and I desperately needed two yards of Anna Maria Horner's fabric for a charm swap I'm in that I didn't know I was in.  So it wasn't that expensive in the scheme of things but more than I would have had to have paid from my favorite fabric stores in the States which are on Etsy and are:

1.  Spice Berry Cottage and Dina, the owner, is just such a delight.
2.  The Intrepid Thread which is owned by Julie who is just charming
and finally the first shop I ever bought anything from:
3.  Swell Cloth which is owned by the very lovely Sarah who I love to pieces

All three stores have given me such excellent service in the past, and will continue to in the future I'm sure.  These women are just THE NICEST ever.

Anyway I do hope you have enjoyed this post but I have to tell you that I have looked at loads of British blogs and still can't find out who posted that darn quilt top using both fabric and linen.  If you guys can't find it I'll just have to keep on looking.

Until next time ...
Lots of Love Patti xxx
American by birth and MOUTH but British in every other way