Wednesday giveaway - upholstery samples

Today's giveaway is a set of eight samples of upholstery fabric. The fabric is quite thick, about the thickness of denim jeans, although much softer. They came from Laura Ashley and are about 3.5" x 5" or 9x14 cm.



There are two of each fabric, in warm reds, to match our dining room curtains. One fabic has gold swirls on it. Apart from the white ones, obviously.



I could imagine them being turned into tissue holders, but I'm sure other people could come up with alternatives - a patch pocket on a bag? Mobile phone cases? Dice bags?

I don't know if they are washable, and the colour might run if you try.

Winner

We have a Wednesday Giveaway winner - Time for Tea and Cakes.

I've been a bit neglectful for this weeks giveaway - I did take some photos but they didn't come out well, and now it is too dark. So I'll put them up tomorrow.

Rainbow Comfort Pack Appeal

Bushfires are so alien to my comfortable English upbringing, where a heatwave means 30C temperatures. They are half a world away, and my knowledge of them was little more then a description of one in the Silver Brumbly books - all I could remember was the horses and animals fleeing for the creek.

And then, in one of the Australian news articles it had a comment from a firefighter from Bellarat. I know Bellarat - not in person, but from Trash's trip to Australia this year. They went to Bellarat, they met bloggers in Ballarat. Suddenly, the fire was affecting friends of friends.

Clearly, the most useful thing was money - a donation to the Red Cross sorted that. But that seemed to be the only thing that I could do from this side of the globe.

Until Trash sparked me into action with her Big Ask.

Pink and Blue's appeal for bags seemed to be the right thing for me to do last week. The bags will be filled with donated toys for the children affected. So on Friday I made some bags (using this pattern), and on Monday I posted them. I added a little note to them saying where they had been made (because they might be interested) and a link to my blog (because they might be interested) and then I thought if I've told them about my blog, I have to tell my blog about them.

I was in two minds as to whether to make this post or not. All I want to do is to remind you, the reader, that if you thought about it, but haven't done anything yet, there is still time. If you don't want to make a bag (I did, I had the material and the pattern was on the 'net), then Maria is offering to post a collection of Star blocks to one of the other appeals out there.

Week-end Roundup

As this is nominally a craft blog, I thought I'd better post some vaguely craft like things which I've done recently.

First is a pair of gloves made using Schoeller & Stahl Socka in colour Hummingbird. Both the yarn and the pattern came from Web of Wool and were bought at the Knitting and Stitching show. I thought I'd got them in 2007, but they weren't pictured in my blog. I know it wasn't 2008, because they were already in progress then (lets not say when they were started, other then "before October 2008").

Anyway, Web of Wool still sells the yarn, and I still think it is great: it is made of three strands of yarn which have been dyed with the same set of colours, and plied together. some of teh time, the plys match and you get it single colour, but other times you get this glorious multicoloured effect. It happened that one palm would have been single coloured, but that made the two gloves look too different. So I phaffed around, and knitted the thumb in that colour. I also tried to make the fingers semi-matching. I love the way they have turned out, and I've been wearing them for the last two weeks.

Also last week, I had one of those days when needles seem to thread themselves. So I threaded several at once, for use in my leaf quilt. I've since now used those threaded needles.

The other thing I did on Friday was to make some bags for the Rainbow Comfort Bags appeal, for children affected by the bushfires in Australia. Obviously money is what they need most (you can donate to the Red Cross in the UK), but this seemed like another, more personal thing to do for them. I'm not going to post pictures yet, as the little package hasn't yet been posted (the PO was shut when I got to it yesterday). There are lots of ways in which individuals can help with the appeal - Trash probably has as good a selection of links as I could have found. Oh and she also has a raffle.

Wednesday Giveaway

Admittedly, this comes into the category of "weird things on a blog giveaway". It's the pattern and fabric, which has been cut out, to make a child's set of pyjamas.



It's been a bag for at least 8 years, and I can't remember anything much about why I decided to make them or why I stopped.

The pattern is Butterick 4222, for ages 2 - 6 years old. You can make a nightdress, girl's pyjamas and boy's pyjamas using it.

The fabric is some kind of flannel, possibly viyella. It is almost certainly washable, but I don't know whether I pre-washed it.

I appear to have traced the pattern pieces for the girl's pyjamas onto tissue, so the original pattern is still uncut. On some of the copies, I have written "size 2", which probably means it was for the two year old size. Most of the pieces are currently pinned in place. There are no notions in the bag, and no thread.


The giveaway is for the pattern, and all the fabric which was with it, including the pattern pieces and the leftovers. I'll be selecting the winner next Wednesday (probably about lunchtime in the UK), and posting either on Wednesday or Thursday.

To enter, please just leave a comment. I'm curious as to whether you would plan to make them into PJs as per the pattern, or whether you expect want to use it for something else. But you don't have to say.

Announcing the Winners

Firstly, thank you to Katy from I'm a Ginger Monkey for organizing the International Giveaway. I think all the bloggers who signed up to give things have been astounded by the response.

However, I expect you are waiting to find out the winners - we used the random number generator on DH's iTouch to get the number. The winners were genuinely international.

The winning blogger was from Canada: Dolores, of True Blue Canadian, who won the shoe fabric.

In second place was Bulgaria, with the yarn being won by Domoshar. She has a shop with some lovely patchwork stuff. Do go and explore her website.

In third place is the USA, with the apron going to SummerSadie.

I've sent messages to each winner, so hopefully I'll get their addresses soon and be able to send them their prizes.

Hopefully everyone who took part had fun - having so many giveaways at once is quite different from entering just one at a time.

Snowed Under

Gosh! I feel completely overwhelmed by the response to my giveaway: I really was not expecting so many comments. Perhaps I should have spruced the place up a bit more - put out a big pot of coffee and a plate of gingerbread biscuits or something.

Usually I read all comments as soon as they appear, but this time it would take all day. I will read all of them, and visit all your blogs, but it will take me a little while to get round them all.

With the giveaway - it was supposed to be 24 hours, but as I was only expecting about three comments in 24 hours, I was going to leave it until Saturday. So that's what I will do - at some point on Saturday (UK time) I will print off all the comments, and draw for the winners. I'll post either on Saturday or Sunday and email/post a comment on your blog as well if you have won.

Right now I feel like my unused stash is too much, so there will be more giveaways. There won't be another apron (so many people wanted that!), but hopefully someone else you'd all like as much.

Thanks for commenting, and for coming back to read this message.

PS The picture is our garden this morning - four inches of snow.

Great International Stash Giveaway

Announcing Ginger Monkey's great-international-stash Giveaway.

First up, I'm planning to continue with more giveaways, because I have more stuff then seems reasonable. I'm thinking a weekly or fortnightly giveaway, on Wednesdays, until I am comfortable with the quantity of my stash. But that is in the future!

However let me describe today's offerings, for there are not one, but three, hopefully suitable for a range of crafters.

1) First up, there is some lovely fabric - a fat quarter with diagonal rows of red and pink high-heeled shoes. If you are a shoe girl, you'll love this. And if you aren't, the pattern is regular enough to be hidden from a distance.

2) Next we have two balls of variegated raspberry coloured Sirdar Snowflake Chunky Magic. (In reality the lighter colour is pinker.) These were bought in pre-blog days. I was making Kiddo a hooded jumper, but the shop didn't have enough of one colour. I thought I could use these for the arms if need be, but managed to get some more of the right colour later.


3) Last up, we have a child's size apron, mainly blue, but with some red and white.
It would appear to be unused, but was stored in my parents attic for many years. It probably came from Austria or Germany in about 1972, but there are no guarantees there. It looks like the main body was sewn together from three pieces, with a central panel and two side pieces. There are also two patch pockets with large flower motifs. If you didn't want it as an apron, the seams could easily be unpicked and turned into smaller pieces of fabric. The motifs (of men and women in Germanic national custumes) could be appliqued to some other things, like cloth bags. Or you could use it as apron.





OK, so what do you need to do? You have until Saturday to enter, by commenting on this post. Please let me know which ones you want and your order of preference. Also make sure that there is an easy means for me to get in touch with you. I'll print the names out, and then pull them out of a hat to find out who will win.

If there are fewer then 10 entrants, the first name pulled will get everything they want, and the next name will get what they wanted out of what was left, until everything is gone.

If there are 11 to 20 entrants, the winner will get their top two, and the other item(s) will remain in the draw for the next name pulled.

If there are more then 20 entrants, then the winner will get one thing, the second will get one thing and the third will get one thing.

Finally, please do join in here! I don't mind if this is your first time reading this blog, or if you have your own blog, or any of those many possible permutations that lead to people lurking.

Not the giveaway

The post from last week was advance warning!!! Not the giveaway!!! :-)


Oh why not -

Using the magic of blogger, time dilation effects will set-off the giveaway post in a few moments.