Lucky in blogland and and a new idea....

I have a lovely list of thank yous to share. It must appear that my cup runneth over but, honestly, I am not unhappy about that. In fact I am extremely greatful and excited to have been the lucky recipient of some giveaways in blogland this year.
Receiving lovelies in the post is just so exciting - most recently Carole from Madness and Mess sent me this ... it was wrapped up so beautifully I found it really hard to undo!!!

Isn't it sweet - this brooch will look great on my work apron lined up with other treasures I have collected.  Carole does such lovely work - thank you so much.

This year I joined up with Kathy from Sew-Happy House's Friends With Benefits Swap - the deadline for this is fast approaching but I am under control (I hope). The wonderful Kathy has been doing regular draws for those who are taking part and to my delight I received this gorgeous charm pack.

Joy, by Kate Spain, Moda.
This will make a fun Christmas project.

And earlier in the year I won a giveaway from Melody whose blog, The House on the Side of the Hill is full of creativity and inspiration. I won a voucher to spend at the Want It, Need It, Quilt It on-line store and I must admit it took me a while to decide which yummy to buy. Jane was so obliging, flatpacking my purchase to save on postage - hence the jelly roll is in bits. I chose Papillon by 3 Sisters. I also look forward to doing something with this. I did pop in a bit of my own $ in to help pay for this, and also bought a perspex hexagon template I can use for fussy cutting.
It's seen here with the lovely scissor fob Melody sent me for Christmas which I realise I haven't shown yet. ( Shame on me).

Lovely! Thank you Melody for your generosity.

Thank you all for these gifts, I really appreciate receiving them.

Lately I have been concentrating on putting together this gorgeous quilt. It will be a shop sample for my 'local' (aka as The Country Yard) and I will show more of it later. For now I want to show something I tried this afternoon.

When I do my hand turned under applique I often have the difficulty of how to transfer a stitchery design to the front of my work - there are too many layers to see through for tracing.
[On the heart in the photo above there are 2 darkish layers of fabric as well as the background fabric. Sometimes I draw the design on the back of the background when first transferring the applique design - but stitching using a guide from the back can be slow and difficult.]
EDIT - I applique using the back basting method so marking the stitching design first isn't practical.

I adapted the method of using tulle to make a stencil for transferring quilting designs as shown by Don Linn in this month's FMQ Challenge hosted by SewCalGal.

Here is what I have did today -

Traced the stitchery design onto tulle with a marker pen. Then pinned my tulle
to my fabric.

Drew over design on tulle with a pencil, remove tulle, and Volia!
One stitchery design easy to stitch.

I think this would be tricky with fiddly little details but it worked well in this situation. So I've learnt something today!!
Hope something has given you pleasure today :-)
Thanks for visiting and happy stitching!