Great Mail to Receive!

I've had some wonderful quilty mail this week.  Best of all were this pair of A4 sized skinny quilts by Ann Clare - my photos don't do justice to the richness of the stitching and the fabrics.  I'm very pleased with them.

I've also received a book  The Encyclopedia of Quilting and Patchwork as part of my (say it quietly and it won't be so scary, actually, I've only signed up for Module 1, so I'll just see how I get on with it and needn't be worried) C&G course materials.  Then I ordered myself a 9 1/2" ruler as that's the block size that I'd decided on for the samples that we have to make up, and it was on special offer on a site that I was buying something else from.....errrm, a quilt book (Scrap Quilt Sensation by Katherine Guerrier).  Also a couple of lovely 'favourite food' postcards from a BQL swap.

Most of my sewing time has been spent on the fish quilt you had a peek at before.  It's almost finished now, but I'll need a couple of willing helpers to hold it up for me so that I can take a photo of it.

Instead you can see this block - called Nelson's Victory - which is, unusually for me, all hand stitched.  As I was hand stitching it I decided that I might as well choose something with inset seams, as I often don't choose them when I machine stitch.  My plan is to use lots of blues and white as a background for my sample blocks, and then perhaps I'll be able to put them all together at the end.

Hope that you have a happy week.