Super Mail Call!

Yesterday's mail brought a huge surprise, and now I can tell you about it! As most of you know, SewCalGal hosted both a physical party in San Diego and a virtual Christmas Quilters Party as a benefit for Operation Homefront last month, and of course there were door prizes, raffle prizes and a Golden Basket prize for each party.    She had notified those of us who had won a raffle prize a couple weeks ago and gave us a list whereby we could indicate which of the raffle prizes we might be interested in, and she would try to match each winner with a desired prize.

So, yesterday I was expecting my regular Stash tea order from Amazon and when the mail lady drove up our long driveway and honked, I figured that was what had arrived.  But no, the tea is still nowhere in sight, but what did arrive was this huge priority mail box:

   containing all these delicious goodies!

Unbeknownst to me I had won the Golden Basket prize!  To say I was floored and amazed is an understatement!   So many generous sponsors donated prizes for the Quilters Christmas Party and a big Thank You! goes out to each and every one!  You can see SewCalGal's wrap-up post on the Quilters Christmas Party here and also watch for an upcoming post from SewCalGal announcing a Virtual Silent Auction also to benefit Operation Homefront!

It seems 2013 will be my year for learning several new to me quilting techniques.  I had already decided to learn machine applique.  Can you believe after 30 years of off-and-on quilting, I had never done any machine applique!  So, this past week another NewFO was begun, and this is my progress to date.  I found that machine appliqueing around all these pieces took a lot longer than expected, but isn't that always the case.

This will be part of a small piece I'm making as a gift for a young Mom of an Angel.  A quilted wall hanging created by Ulla Niemela of Ulla's Quilt World was my direct inspiration for this little angel.  Ulla creates an abundance of charming little angels, children, animals, etc. in fabric, some are freestanding dolls, some are ornaments, and others are quilted items.   Next I'll need to trim this panel a bit and add some borders, then the fun of free motion quilting it can begin! 

Now it seems I'll need to bite the bullet and learn English paper piecing!  Did you see among that prize package an entire kit and pattern for making a Night Blooms quilt?  Step one of the directions reads "you will need 48 copies of the paper piecing pattern page."  Yep, I'm gonna have to learn paper piecing!  Fortunately for me, the pieces aren't as tiny as some patterns I've seen, so this may possibly be doable even by someone as spatially challenged as yours truly!  I'll definitely print at least 50 copies of the pattern and make a couple practice blocks before cutting into this gorgeous Queen of the Night fabric collection!

There's also a book that came in the box Just around the Corner by Kari M. Carr that features mitered borders with inner scallops!  How cool is that!  These borders would lend themselves so well to baby quilts or as a perfect complement to a quilt with the allover FMQ feathers we've all been learning to do recently.  In the book she also demonstrates the Clearly Perfect Angles stitching template that clings to your machine and allows you to easily stitch perfect half-square triangles, flying geese, joining border and binding strips, etc.  There also just happened to be one of these magic templates included in the box!  More fun!

Well, that's the excitement from my little hillside corner of the world!