WiP + a giveaway!

That's right - two for the price of one! Showing off my current WiP plus having a giveaway! WiP details first so keep reading for the giveaway details - you'll be glad you did ;)

I've been working on some paper pieced blocks to do a mini sampler strip down the back of my XOXO quilt. The rest of the backing will be plain aqua - by request. Mum wants me to quilt in white so the quilting shows up. Eek. Do you think a simple meander will be impressive enough and hide all my errors?!

I am loving paper piecing SO much. Yep, so much in fact I have dreamt I have been paper piecing the past two nights. Disappointing to wake up and discover I wasn't actually sleep paper piecing. Because really, wouldn't that be the ultimate in multi tasking? Sleeping -and- paper piecing at the same time? Alas I am not that talented. Just tired from all that creative dreaming.

So I'd like to introduce you to the two newcomers completed during waking hours.

Adhara:

Pattern is Adhara by Liz Schwartz and Stephen Seifert - picked it up for 99c on equiltpatterns.com. Love this one! I don't think the photo does it justice. Even my 4.5 yo son was impressed. I may have had to fish for compliments but I was rewarded with a very enthusiastic "Beautiful!". He may or may not have been rewarded with some chocolate for that.

Sea Star:

Pattern is Sea Star designed by Liz Schwarts and Stephen Seifert - another 99c bargain. This one gave me a little bit of grief as I was starting to run low on scraps so there are a few extra patches in this one. I have to say, I did not notice until I took a photo that the negative white space around the centre creates a lovely little pointy flower type star too. Pretty!

I retook the photos of the other four blocks which I'll quickly show here because I think these photos are better than my last storm-approaching-bad-light ones. If you're interested in a bit more detail, look over here.

Circle of Geese:

 Birds and Pinwheels:

Snow Crystal:

Bright Star:

Here are all my blocks hanging out together in a little mosaic, showing off their gorgeous scrappiness. That's right - these are pieced entirely from scraps from the XOXO quilt.Yep I'm a bit proud of that.

So the next job now is to sew them all together in a nice sampler strip and make them into a backing! Hopefully that'll be accomplished over the next few days.

Linking up with WiP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced - though hopefully this one will be a finished project soon!

Whew and if you made it all through that, you deserve a giveaway. Of course there will be a pop quiz to make sure you read all the above so I hope you were paying attention. Whoops sorry, just kidding, that's my teacher side showing.

My lovely bloggy friend Fiona from Finding Fifth and I have both reached 50 followers! Exciting for us small time bloggers right? Thank you lovelies for reading our blogs! :) So we've decided to team up and host a giveaway together! We are each offering a charm pack as a prize - ooh yay for fabric right?

My offering is a charm pack of Oh Deer by Momo for Moda.

I picked this one up over at Fabric Buzz which is run by Anorina of Samelia's Mum. She's a fellow member of Quilt Club Australia. Great place to pick up Moda pre-cuts for great prizes here in Oz! :)

Here's a sampling of fabrics in the charm pack:

How gorgeous are those little birds right?! I can't wait til this line comes out in yardage!

So how do you go in the running for this? Easy. You have three options - each one gives you an entry.
1. Leave a comment of any sort (preferably nice haha!) on this blog post.
2. Become a follower of my blog and leave a comment telling me so.
3. Become a follower of Fiona's blog Finding Fifth and leave a comment here telling me :)

Entries end in one week - at 8pm Wednesday 18th April (Aussie time). 

That's it! Do one, do all three - your choice. This is open to everyone - happy to post internationally. Please make sure that you leave a separate comment for each entry. And! Most importantly! Make sure you are not a no-reply blogger! I need some way to contact you in case you're the lucky winner :)  If you're a wordpress user and can't follower via Google Friend Connect, you can subscribe via RSS to your preferred reader. It's all about options!

Thanks if you made it to the end of this post! Long I know! Always so much to say ;) So I'll end here wishing you luck with the giveaway and remind you to pop over to Finding Fifth to see what lovely fabric Fiona has on offer!!