Firstly, many apologies for the delay in updating, although I have so busy I think it is just about excusable. Our last quilting homework was to make FOUR corner blocks, each block made up of two halves (one A and one B), each foundation pieced, using seven different pieces. I managed to complete all four A's, two B's and joined a pair together to make a finished corner unit, but I was slowed down by being visited by the quilting imp from below. This little devil sat on my shoulder and ensured that somehow even the simplest tasks would not go right. My rotary cutter wouldn't cut whole cuts, the needle kept needing to be rethreaded and when I did it, I did it wrong, the fabric was the wrong way round, and so on. I'll stop or you'll be as miserable as I was. Anyway, I was very pleased to complete one, so I could at least take it into class and reassure our lovely tutor that I was getting the hang of it. The irony is that I really like foundation piecing as a technique- just seemed to be having a rought time of it.

More happily, my previous card provision had led to a request to supply an assortment for Mothers Day, now fast approaching. I've photographed an assortment and am very pleased with what I made. Some are cross-stitched, some are made using recent K & Co purchases (pure papercraft) and I made four that are from a stamp I am particularly fond of. The image of a vase of flowers is stamped and then heat embossed. It is then painted using Twinkling H2O paints, then dots are inserted using a paper pricker. Finally, the dots are sewn using a variety of coloured threads, adding texture and further colour highlighting to the card. The finished image is fixed to a card blank and I usually add ribbons at the side, and a couple of gems below. Anything more would be too much. So the cards went in to class last night and were met with a very positive reception, which means more money raised for GRW. The block we were doing last night was a Mariners Compass. Marianne gave us a choice of doing eight or sixteen points - I wimped out and opted for eight. Even that is difficult, but the technique is very beautiful when it is finished, so it is worth persevering, I think.