Espritpatch

Another month has whizzed past me. We were away for 2 weeks and I thought I would do a lot more hand sewing than I actually did but then I had other commitments that have eaten up a lot of my "free" time, hopefully for a positive outcome soon. Fingers crossed. Anyway, let's have a look at what I can cross off my August list and what will be carried forward to my September list. Hoping for Finishes! 1.  Finish my Flower Power quilt for my Grand-Mum 85th birthday  Lazy Bums  challenge for July and this is also going to be my pick for August (again) for  A lovely Year of Finishes  - yes it is finished and gifted 2. Finish my  Cat Quilt  - need 13 more blocks before quilting etc -  yes it is finished and gifted 3. Dumpling Swap -  yes it is finished and sent over to my partner 4. Strawberry Swap -  yes it is finished and sent over to my partner 5. It's a Sister's Thing Swap - secret sewing all done (blog post to come soon) 6. 

The Archive Tuesday linky this week on Val's blog is about Fat Quarters quilt. A few years back I wanted to make a quilt for my friend Barbara that I was going to visit at her home in Sweden, but this was pre-blog day as I made this quilt in 2007. So I decided to revive today and present it to the world(!) in a brand new post. I knew Barbara likes floral, pink fabric so I bought a stack of fat quarters and a cream background fabric and tried to decide how to use them. I used this lovely book from Barbara Chainey to decide on a design for the quilt. Because I made the quilt so long ago, before I use to record my sewing, I only have a few pictures of the finished quilt and none of the in-progress project. The quilt was quilted very simply in the ditch or with straight lines, I probably didn't dare attempting some free-motion quilting on it. Linking to Val's Quilting Studio . Celine

In the last few days, there was a lot of time spent in the car for day trip or travelling from one family to another for the holidays. And in the car, I always take some sewing with me, hand-piecing, paper piecing, stitching or cross-stitch. I have managed to finish 2 sets of hexie flowers for the Inchy Hexie Swap some bright and spots one for Lynette for July  and some dusty pink and cream for Maree for August I have also started my Patchwork of the cross block for the I love Lucy International Bee in 30s fabric for Jennie. I have prepared all the pieces, I now need to assemble the block. These 4 flowers take my total of blocks for August to 17  for the 350-blocks challenge. Linking with Building Blocks Tuesday , WOW , Needle and Thread Thursday . Celine

You may have noticed that there is a blog hop going around where bloggers introduce themselves in a bit more detail and how/why they do what they do. Well it's my turn this week. I was tagged by the lovely Gina from  The Occasional Quilter  a little while ago. Gina gave me plenty of time to prepare, so much so that between the holidays and other secret commitments that I can't share yet, I completely forgot about the blog hop until today (hence a very late post).... when it is now time to post a ll about me. I haven't met Gina in real life (but I hope I will one of these days) but I have been in bees with her and she also is a very good Insta friends, she is always so kind to me. In case you are new to my blog, I thought I would give you a little bit of information about me! I am a French mum of 3 who has been living in the United Kingdom for the last 14 years. My eldest son is 8 and my daughters are 5 and 2. I work (a big) part time in the pharma industry. I spend a

 The cat quilt is finished too (and gifted!). I had a sewing marathon last week to finish all the cat blocks I was missing. I made 30 in total 3 in each 10 colors I had picked. I tasked DH to arrange them while I was at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham and pieced the top on Thursday evening on my return. I kept the quilting simple, with a diagonal grid all over the quilt. I had started marking it with masking tape but found that my lines were woobly  so I tried marking with my Hera marker (that I had never used for marking the quilting) and found that was so much better, something to remember for the future! I used the grey background fabric to bind my quilting and this time I added the binding the "traditional" way, machine sewing on the front and hand sewing on the back. Et voila, another one of my Q3 Finish Along list, another OPAM and another gift! Quilt stats: Cats fabrics: assortment of scraps from my stash Background and binding

If you read me regularly, you will know that I am a swap addicts :-D and I can't help but sign up to all those gorgeous swaps that come up on Flickr, Instagram etc.. And last week was the deadline to send 2 of these lovely swap packages. The first one I sent out was The Strawberry Swap . This one had been a 2-parts swap for me as I had gathered half of my package before the FQR 2014 where I knew my partner would be. I arranged for someone else to pass my parcel to Vanessa so she wouldn't know yet who I was. I made her one key pouch all with strawberry fabric and gathered a few strawberry/chocolate goodies. To add to my first half of the parcel, I made a mini with a big paper-pieced strawberry (pattern from yvonne.dk) with the lovely little strawberry fabric that seems to have been very popular with lots of the swappers. I added a few pieces of strawberry fabric to complete the package and sent it to my partner last week. And just as I was finishing to put together this