Charm swapping!!! Let the fun begin.

Do you love charm squares?  Scrappy pretty piles of charm squares?  I use them all the time for bee blocks or the quick baby quilt finish, so I like having a colorful selection at the ready.  Several of you have used up your charms from our last swap (me too!) and have asked for another to be organized, so here is your chance to jump in and join in the fun.  It is going to be a small bit different this time, so please read this post fully before signing up.

I am looking for 28 people to join in the fun, but would entertain 56 participants if we are so lucky.  There will be one week of signups starting today and closing on 12 October at midnight.  To sign up, leave a comment below.  If you are (or may possibly be) a no-reply commenter, include your email address in your comment.  Myself, or my fellow Charm Fairy Irina, will be in touch with you after signups close to assign you a color.  That email should arrive by 17 Oct.

When you get your color assignment email, you are to run off and look for TWO prints (1 yard each) that are predominately your assigned color, but in two very different shades of that color.  One dark and the other light.  We are looking for modern prints and not solids.  Be sure that the print you are choosing is of a reasonable scale to be cut into charms.  Fabrics must be 100% cotton of high quality - no cheap-o prints that will bleed everywhere, please.

When you choose your fabric, please upload a photo to the flickr group.  To ensure no duplicates, be sure to check what others have uploaded before you buy your fabric.

Being a Fluffy Sheep Quilting sponsored swap, a 10% discount is offered on any fabrics purchased from the shop.  I will send out a discount code in the email with your color assignment.  If you buy from FSQ, I will also cut the charms for you AND you will not have to pay shipping.  Oh, the happiness!

Cut and ship your fabrics so that they arrive in Galway by 22 November.  If you have not cut charms before, use this tutorial as a guide. A new rotary blade and pressing ahead of time helps a whole bunch.  Include in your parcel a pre-addressed return envelope.  No return envelope, no returned charms.    

You will receive in your returned parcel 112 charms, 56 prints in duplicate.  When shipping comes around, I will ask you to send (via paypal) to me the cost of your shipping so that I do not loose out on paypal fees.  I will not be invoicing you, but requesting you send the payment directly to me by email.

Let's get swapping, friends!

Rainbow Charm Swap: Finished!

It has been AGES since I posted, so I have lots of stuff to tell you guys.  Let's start with a Rainbow Charm Swap update.  In the past few days the poor Irish postal system has been chock-a-block with little charm packs flying to all corners of the world.

Ages and ages ago, I had 56 chatty, excited women sign up for a charm swap.  They each contributed 2 yards of fabric in their assigned color, cut into 112 little 5x5 inch squares.  In return, they were to get 112 charms in a glorious rainbow.  Pretty simple and straight forward, right?  It seemed so until the charms started to arrive at the house!  That means over 6,270 charms!  Yikes!  Each day I'd return from work to find a mini-mountain of fabric happiness.

The pressure was on!  I had to cut charms for the 20-25 people who bought fabric from the shop!   So I cut.  And I cut.  And then I cut some more. I went through several rotary blades, but I did get there in the end!

Of course, as quickly as I could cut, you guys were sending them in the post!

Until I had a mini rainbow growing on one of the shop shelf!

When the final charm pack arrived, it was time to get sorting.  I started with the purples and thought I'd work my way up to pink.  56 charm packs take up a whole lot of space, so I had to extend the kitchen table and spread out.  We ate dinner in the living room several nights!  There was no way I was cleaning this up for a silly meal!  

Until finally I was done!  Done!  I took out my little bin of fabric ribbons and started to tie up packs.  This was my first time using those little fabric cut-offs in any way and I really did like how they added to the feel of the fabric parcel.  I'll absolutely do that again in the future!

It took three MASSIVE shopping bags to get all of the parcels into the car and four trips to the local post office (so as not to flood the place with fabric!).  Anyway, they're now on their way to their new homes.

I hope you guys are pleased when they arrive.  I have loved doing this as there were so many new-to-me swappers.  It was great getting to know you all a bit better and fantastic fun picking out fabric with you all.  Thank you for playing along!

This is another finish for Leanne's 2013 FAL, making it 5 of 8 finishes!  Woo hoo!  

Charm Heaven

These charm squares have really taken over the week.  I thought I would show you how pretty they are looking this evening.  Much to my dismay, after I took this photo I found Catherine's charms on the kitchen table!  I forgot to bring them with me up to the shop!  Sorry, Catherine. They're here - honest.

I cut thousands and thousands of charms from shop fabric, which I really honestly did enjoy doing.  I'm not sure I would want to do thousands more right away, but I could see us doing this annually if you guys are up for it! 

And of course the other gazillion charms came cut by our swap buddies.  Ladies, I so love the fabrics you choose to contribute.  They're gorgeous!  I'm not sure the post lady is thrilled with all of the extra work this week, but I couldn't wait to get home each evening and see what arrived!

I have one more piece to cut for the texty charm swap.  It's become a ritual this evening charm-cutting :)  

Rainbow Charm Swap: They're Arriving!

My post box is overflowing with goodness this week!  I thought you might like to see what happiness has been arriving:

Yum yum!  That's right!  Charms for the charm swap.  Several ladies in the swap have been so on top of things that they have already received their fabric, cut like mad and shipped them.  Amazing.  I have been cutting like mad to try to keep up.  I have found my groove now and think it is quite relaxing cutting those little five inch squares.  Thank goodness.  I have many more to go!

Fluffy Sheep Quilting Rainbow Charm Swap

I have several scrappy quilt ideas brewing in my mind, so I was wondering if any of you are up for a rainbow charm swap?

Here's the idea:

Sign ups will be held for 1 week starting today (25 March to 1 April 2013).  I would like to get 28 interested folks, but if I hear from 56 of you I am open to a larger swap.

Once all of the spots are filled, each person will be assigned one color.  You are to run off and look for a print that is predominately that color.  If there are 28 of you, you are buying 1 yard of fabric.  If there are 56 in the swap, then 2 yards of fabric.  We are looking for modern prints, not solids.  Be sure that the print you are choosing is of a reasonable scale to be cut into charms.  Fabrics must be 100% cotton of high quality - no cheap-o prints that will bleed everywhere, please.

When you choose your fabric, please upload a photo to the flickr group.  To ensure no duplicates, be sure to check what others have uploaded before you buy your fabric.

Being a Fluffy Sheep Quilting sponsored swap, a 10% discount is offered on any fabrics purchased from the shop.  I'll send out a discount code in the email with your color assignment.  If you buy from FSQ, I'll also cut the charms for you AND you won't have to pay shipping.  Oh, the happiness!

Get your fabrics over to the Fluffy Sheep household by 6 May 2013 pre-cut into pretty little charm squares.  Include in your parcel a pre-addressed return envelope.  No return envelope, no returned charms.  Be sure you press your fabric before cutting.  Here's a great tute if you've never cut charm squares before.

I will return charm packs to you the week after (13 May 2013), assuming all of your charms arrive on time.  This swap will be open to international folks.  When shipping comes around, I will ask you to send (via paypal) to me the cost of your shipping.  I will not be invoicing you, but requesting you send the payment directly to me by email.

Let's get swapping, ladies!

PS - Please do spread the word on your blogs.  A button will follow, but until then feel free to just swipe the photo above to use in your posts...

Rainbow Charm Swap

Who could resist a charm swap hosted by the lovely Emily of Strawberry Patch?  Apparently I can not.  I love scrappy rainbow charm swaps so much that I signed up for two rounds!  Woo hoo!

I was assigned red for the first swap, so I chose this Woodlands print with little red and aqua flowers.  Sorry for the stinky photo - it's night time, so the lighting is bad and you can't see the adorable little aqua guys. For the second swap, I picked up this 1001 Peeps jewel print.

Hope my swap buddies like them!

WIP Update: Stitching Like Mad

This has been a very busy sewing week for me.  I am excited about what I have accomplished.

Finished:

This week we completed our Japanese Fabric Swap.  We are very excited to receive our charm packs and a few folks are already posting finished projects using them!  For now, I am just happy to pet, look and imagine what I will create.  This week I will be adding a Japanese Fabric Swap tab to Fluffy Sheep Quilting. It's nearly ready for prime time!

Currently In Progress:

I finished the top for Lattice Illusions this week.  I am simply thrilled to have reached this milestone.  The back and binding are ready to go.  Tomorrow I will layer it and get to quilting.  I think I have a quilting plan that is mostly stitch in the ditch in the center three panels and a cross-hatch in the border "tiles".  We'll see how it goes, anyway. 

I am still playing catch up for the Birdie Stitches BOM from Little Miss Shabby.  I have the January to May blocks finished, but not June.  I finished the July block earlier this week and have to jump in on August.  I want to put a little more of my own personality into this block calendar, so I'd like to re-design the June block to be a camping picture and the August block to be a snorkeling/diving scene.  I'll work on that this week.

My biggest source of pride this week is the near completion of our Community Quilt top.  I ran out of fabric and am waiting for more to arrive.  Once its here, I can finish the corner blocks, stitch on the final two borders (which are already pieced) and finish the back.  When layered I will (somehow) quilt this with straight lines so as to not detract from the piecing pattern.  The Kona Papaya binding arrived today.  I am really in love with the yellows in this quilt, so I wanted to highlight them in the binding.

I sent off my charms for the Rainbow Charm Swap 2 at Ellison Lane Quilts.  I am looking forward to seeing what lovely packet I get in return.

The Sew Bee Blissful quilting bee (hosted by Sew Happy Geek) has just started.  I am happy to be part of this, my first, quilting bee.  Come back tomorrow for a more detailed post!

As usual on a Wednesday, I am linking up with Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday, and Someday Crafts Whatever Goes Wednesday.

Ready to Go!

I am one of the lucky few who were fast enough to sign up for Ellison Lane Quilt's Rainbow Charm Swap 2.  Jennifer assigned us each a color and we were to buy two meters of fabric in that colorway.  Here they are all cut and ready to head into the post this afternoon.

Aren't they cute?  I hope my fellow swap partners like them as much as I do!

Rainbow Charm Swap 2

I was lucky enough to get one of the 56 available spots for the Ellison Lane Rainbow Charm Swap!  I am completely excited!  Jennifer sent out our color assignments last night.  I have orange.  Orange?  My stash is completely devoid of orange anything, but its a color that I really like when I see it in other quilts.  This is a good challenge for me, then. 

I did a bit of shopping and found these beauties!  (Photos are courtesy of the Fat Quarter Shop website.)  They are both ordered and on their way to Galway.   For a bit of eye candy, you can see what other fabrics are already posted in the Flickr group.  I am shocked at how fast this group is moving along.  There were 34 fabrics posted before mine by 17 other swap partners and we were only assigned our colors yesterday!  Whew!  I'm going to have to work to keep up with this crew.