At last I can reveal pictures of the jelly roll quilt. The dear friend for whom I'm making it arrives tomorrow, and I know she won't be on the net tonight as she's packing. Today, the weather was good, so Andrew took a few pics, firstly of me on the stairs then out in the garden. By the way, if anyone has any good tips on photographing quilts when finished, I'd love to hear them. Our wonderful greyhound Andy (well, both of them are) decided he wanted to be in the picture too, so I couldn't resist that one because of the soppy look on his face.

Much to write about since my last post. Again apologies for the hiatus in posting. Firstly, we had the final session of our quilting class on the 19th. It was as enjoyable as usual, as Marianne went through some of the sashing and finishing tips and techniques. I have put myself on the waiting list for one of the summer classes, making a log cabin chicken. I also went mad and decided to treat myself to some fabric. I bought the sashings for the class quilt, and keen readers will recall that I wanted to make a purple quilt for my friend's Gothic daughter. So I picked up an exciting assortment of purple fabrics, covered in stars and unicorns. I am looking forward to making this up into a nice lap quilt for when she is up in her room, on the Internet late at night, as her house is not the warmest, being in an exposed position, on a bleak hillside in deepest Carmarthenshire. I also succumbed to the lure of a couple of charm packs - I am going to make a nice lap quilt with these, which will probably be for me, although I might give it away, dither dither. The fabric selection is a new Moda range called At the Water's Edge - very soft, faded corals, tans and duck egg blues, with some dusty yellows. Very restful, tranquil shades, and beautiful patterns. In spite of these calling to me, I have refused to even enter the room where they are stored as I've been focused on the Easter dog show.

By the day of the show, I had accumulated nearly 200 cards that I had steadily been making for the past couple of months. They were organised into a range of drawers from my craft unit in the spare bedroom, and I took some quilting fabric as a tablecloth. Andrew made me up a stand-up price list. At the show, my table was next to the face painting lady, so lots of children. The Easter weather was atrocious, with sleet, snow and rain, all in a biting wind. Sadly, this affected visitor numbers, but those who did attend were very positive about the cards. I think the stall raised about £35, and I am waiting to hear how much was raised by the whole event. A fellow greyhound supporter has seen and liked the cards, and it is now possible that we may trial having some of them on sale at their hair salon. If this raises any extra funds for greyhounds, this would be wonderful. It was lovely at the show to see lots of hounds, looking happy and beautiful. We dithered about taking our two but decided that as Andrew was helping in the kitchen, and I was on a stall, it would probably be better if they stayed at home.

The next job is to finish tidying the spare bedroom, and I want to photograph my jelly roll quilt as it is being presented to its new owner this Friday. So normal and more frequent service should be resumed soon.

Apologies to all for the delay in posting. Not because of a hiatus in craft related activities, but rather the reverse. The craft room now looks like an explosion in a card factory, as the next Greyhound show is on Easter Sunday and for the first time I will be sitting on a stall fundraising by the sale of hand made cards. I have never done this before and am feeling a variety of emotions including excitement, worry and curiosity. Although I make cards regularly for the GRW shop, I don't actually come face to face with the buyers so it will be interesting to see what sells (if anything) and get feedback.

I attach a photo of an Easter card made for my in-laws, who we are visiting today. The design was cross stitched, using soft shades of blue and coffee tones. A darker brown thread was used for stitching the message. I then applied seed beads (a dark rainbow assortment) to represent the spots as I am still not up to French knots. The design was mounted in a cream coloured aperture card. Along the bottom, I applied ribbon, brown with little blue dots and finally applied a fabric flower in blue, attached by a pale blue crystal brad. The envelope has been adorned in my usual style with an exuberant assortment of Easter stickers.

Quilting class tonight. Our homework last week was to complete an appliqué block, which I did. I'll post a photo of it shortly. Anything computer-y has been at sixes and sevens because of the computer falling over at the end of last week, and we are only now getting back to some sort of normality. Tonight we started work on the big centre block which will be in the middle of the quilt - an enjoyable piece to work on. Marianne showed us how to do one of the quarters in class and we now have the others to do for homework. I had some very positive feedback from the other ladies who had bought Mothers Day cards, saying that their mothers and mothers in law had liked them very much. It's so nice to know this.

The shop is currently having a big sale and all of us were drooling over the wonderful fabrics that were in the sale and imagining projects. I've decided to make a visit later in the week, partly because it's better to look at the colours in daylight, but also to make a more sober assessment of what I can realistically achieve and not to get too carried away (which would be so easy to do!!).
At the moment, my current (very vague) list would be to make :-

A gothic purple one for Sarah (my friend's daughter, who is a 17 year old Gothic princess)
A tablecloth for the kitchen
One for my aunt
One or more Christmas hangings, cushions or lap quilts for our house and possibly also as gifts.

The shop has also released its plans for its tenth anniversary this year and is having a special exhibition of quilts later in the summer. I don't know at the moment whether to put in one of mine. Also they have released details for a programme of summer classes - there are some really nice ones and I think I will sign up for them. Generally they fill up quickly so I will get my skates on. One of the ones that had us all in giggles tonight was a one day workshop on "Decorating Your Bra for Belly Dancing" - I say why stop at Belly dancing? Why not for doing the hoovering or the washing up? Or even walking the dog?