Hat Band Hotspot!

 I've been finishing up hatbands this week.  This one is known as 'scrumple bubble', with a line of coral line protrusions around the band.  The original design just had them, nothing else, but it looked too plain, so I added the scrim and some stitching (which doesn't show up at all in this photo!).

Next to be finished was this simple 'seaweed' style - with a move away from Kona Cotton solids into Fabric Freedom prints.  If I was making it again I'd make the stems thinner.

 

 This band is still unfinished.  This is just the background to what will be traditional applique (at least, that's the plan in my head at the moment).

Finally, I finished the ruched roses band, started several months ago!  I decided to change this one too, from having just a few roses at the front to having roses all around it.  What I can't decide, having looked at the photos, is whether I should add more spiral stitching up the sides and crown of the hat.  I'm starting to think that it looks slightly odd to have the brim with the stitched spiral and the rest of it 'loose'.

 

For a real treat, here is a photo of my stitched birthday postcards.  Aren't they fabulous?  What a talented group of quilters are members of my birthday postcard swap!  We've spent a happy week sorting and re-sorting them - difficult to pick an absolute favourite, and quite hard to pick a top five!

I failed to take photos of my other cards or presents, but I can share with you that I got wonderful fabric, rope and a book about making fabric bowls (thank you Nicky and Peter!), a lovely handmade bag and necklace (thank you Benta!), and lots of lovely crafting goodies (thank you, DH and DDs!).

Off to play with some more quilt ideas for my C&G, and to complete part 3 of Love Entwined.

I was thinking about part 4 yesterday.  I guessed that there would be about 40 pieces to stitch down, so was planning to try and catch up by adding three a day - finished in time for the 15th October and the next part.  When I started counting, I realised that it was a bigger task than I'd realised.  There are about 110 flower, leaf and berry pieces plus the stems, which I will probably embroider.  So, about 10 pieces a day and a couple of days for stems.  Doable if I set my mind to it but I'm not sure that I'll be able to manage quite that much when I'm still doing handwork for the C&G requirements!  Perhaps this isn't the month to catch up after all!