SALE-tastic!

I'm not usually a big fan of sale shopping, the clothes are usually a bit on the small side for my more comfortably built frame and I'm not good around sharp elbows and bad manners. However....my friend works in Jems in Canterbury which was having a sale on fabric so I thought it would be polite and nice to go and wish M a 'Happy New Year' and maybe glance/scrabble frantically through the sale bolts. The fabric was gorgeous and was from £2-£5 per metre! This little lot, and there is at least 1m of each came to £17, I may be a sale convert, but next time I will not take the family, they were considerably less excited than me!

Another reason that I felt particularly justified in my purchases was that last night (whilst watching Jonathan Creek on the I-player-did anyone else see it?-how cool- and God how can a duffel coat look that sexy?) I started playing with one of my Christmas books (Thanks Simon). I have long been a massive fan of Kumiko Sudo and am not disappointed. This book is a collection of flowers folded from fabric that has been sewn together to make it double sided. I have never tried Cathedral window but I imagine this is like an extension of that. Having tried a little bit I think the key thing is a really good contrast between the two sides. More fabric a must then!

Thanks to those of you who have shown interest in the 'robin swap'. I will keep it open till next weekend and then ask for definite commitments and postal addresses. I think it would work like this;

We would all choose a theme; colour, trees, a piece of fabric we love and then everyone in the group would make a textile patch of say 7" (including seam allowance) based upon this theme and post the patch on to the next member of the group. Eventually we would all get a package with our theme in blocks which we could then use however we wished. Does this make sense? I think that making four patches each seems reasonable so there could be groups of 5. Let me know if you have any questions, or if you would like to take part.