Secret Sewing

It was a good day to be inside sewing yesterday, away from the wild and woolly weather raging outside.  I commented to Robin that he would be glad he wasn’t still working as a truck driver.  He would have been climbing in and out of his truck all day, calling in to shops to take the  order, walk back to his truck to fill it, and back again to the shop to deliver the order.  At least in my previous working life I was safely tucked up in front of a computer in a dry office all day.  A tornado came ashore at the Kapiti Coast on Saturday and wrecked havoc, and although the weather is slowly improving, we have been promised a return of storm conditions later in the week.  Amidst all this chaos, my hyacinth bulbs are flowering beautifully.  Luckily I had taken them inside so they escaped a battering by the storm. 

  A little pot of beauty

Now, back to this secret sewing.  The Friday Stitchers meet monthly and decided to have a “paper bag swap”.  Everyone decides on a block they would like made and stitches the first one, specifying their colour choice.  These blocks are then swapped around the group each month, safely tucked away from sight in a bag, and the owner doesn’t get to see her blocks till the swap has run it’s course.  So far I have worked on a split nine patch, a paper pieced design, and spent yesterday afternoon putting a large block together using the requested warm and cool colours.  (No photos until we have our great reveal meeting.)  My choice doing the rounds is a log cabin block.  This block swap is a lot of fun and stretches our creativity as quite often the blocks requested are outside our comfort zone, and the required colours are not necessarily in our stash.  It will be great to see everyone’s blocks in a few months time. 

Also had time to stitch some more floral blocks for the Anniversary raggy quilt I’m making for my sister.  The next step will be to lay them all out on the floor to see if I have made enough, then start stitching them together.  Then cut some strips and sewed them together to make more nine patch blocks to  border my caravan quilt.  While I was doing all this Robin said to me, “you do a lot of sewing, don’t you?” Has he only just noticed, I wonder?