Friday, November 30, 2012

Smiley Face

Today is Friday and I am actually writing a post 'specially so I can link up with my pal Felicity and her Friday Felicities series. There are several things making me happy today.


  1. Two of the Gathered Threads (the name of our little Friday stitch group) came over this morning for a latte and some stitch time!
  2. I baked a Pumpkin Cake with Brown Butter Icing as my contribution to a family dinner party at a friend's house tonight. I made it gluten free by using Bob's Red Mill GF All Purpose Flour. Mmmmmm.
  3. There is a very auspicious number of Friendly Followers hanging out at Poppyprint these days!  Did you know that 8 is a lucky number in Chinese culture? Vancouver has a large population of Chinese immigrants, mostly from Hong Kong, and local developers are very wise to that fact. There are several condo towers downtown that all seem to have multiple 8's as their street address! In fact, one tower went all out to entice buyers by designing their logo as three curving seahorses (a good luck animal, apparently) to form the 8's!

I was excited when I had 8 followers, thrilled with 88, but 888? That's just astonishing!! Thank you all so much for your support.

  4. I actually managed to complete a challenge project several days before the deadline of the VMQG's November meeting. All guild members who were interested in participating received a hunk of Kona Modern Quilts (a fun fabric line designed by local uber-talented designer Cynthia Frenette and printed by Kaufman). We were allowed to add any Kona solids we wanted and could make whatever our little hearts desired.  Incidently, Cynthia has a super sweet holiday bunting tutorial on her blog at the moment using a unique flag shape. Make it with your own fabric, or order her amazing Spoonflower panel!

I only had one fat quarter to work with...a light blue with primary coloured dots connected by a thin white grid line.  Hmmmm, what to do.

DSC_2858

Make a playmat for my nephew, that's what! The little guy will be turning two in the spring and his name starts with "I". After making stitch and flip corners on 5" squares of red, blue and yellow with the challenge fabric, I had a felicitous amount of each number that, when design-walled, formed a simultaneous letter "I" and roman numeral II. Yippee! I quilted it with a free motion triangular stiple. It's been ages since I FMQ'd and I must say my stitch length is totally random, but I know little "I" won't mind.

Iain is Two (or II, as it were) - by Poppyprint

Not only was my challenge project complete with more than a week to spare, this birthday present is ready MONTHS in advance. That hardly ever never, happens around here! Bonjour, je suis Queen of the Last Minute Club.

   5.  There is still time to enter my Poppyprint 500 giveaway! Just a little teaser before you all get numb bum on Monday surfing the Sew Mama Sew giveaway day blogs for 5 hours!  Enter here. Followers, both new and experienced, get a second entry! Then you can come on back Monday for an entirely new giveaway.


Happy weekend friends!

15 comments:

felicity said...

VERY felicitous happenings.

Hey, does the linky show for you? For some reason I can't see it when I open my blog.

Kristie said...

Plenty to be happy about!

Leanne said...

These are a lot of felicities! Your playmat is very fun, I really love it. And I just checked, the give away day is for a week, no need for numb bum. I have entered your giveaway, it is excellent and I am wishing I win.

Heather D. said...

A very sweet playmat for your nephew. Congrats on 888. Wow! Do you ever wonder who all these people are?? I sure do, when I see my number, which is only in the 200's so far.

Delores said...

Cool playmat, the colours are great.

Love to win!

Delores said...

I am a follower!!

Katie B said...

I love I's playmat! Lucky kid!!

Sarah said...

Your design layout of the I and roman 2 is very clever! Well done. I like it a lot

dutchcomfort said...

Love the quilting on the playmat!!

amy dame said...

did you know that coquitlam looks like a dragon on a map (barely, really) and that's why a lot of people have immigrated there? and richmond has the word rich in the name, it's kind of obvious.

my mom used to work for condo developers, i learned so many random things.

your KMQ project is so great! i'm super impressed that you finished it in time, and so far in advance for gifting. i'm still crossing my fingers that i'll get mine finished by the next FVMQG meeting, it's taking soooooo much longer than i thought!

Mrs Flying Blind... said...

Great bunch of good stuff x

Katy Cameron said...

Loving your random FMQ!

Julia Graber said...

888? Congratulations! I don't know how you folks do it. My piddley 76 needs some sort of booster.

Cheryl's Teapots2Quilting said...

I'm sure that quilt will fit him to a "T" ; ) Congrats on the 888

Live a Colorful Life said...

Cool stuff happening here! You'll be passing 1000 lickety split! What a great playmat--I'm sure he will spend many happy hours using it.