A mini finish and another gift

I still seem to be in my Mini Phase. They are an easy thing to manage when all your sewing things are upended. I tried to be so logical and organised when I packed up my sewing cave a few months back (for our little house extension) but I failed miserably!

In the meantime, minis seem to be the way to go. I've just finished this one.

Cute huh? The pattern is Scrappy Whirlwind from the About.com Quilting site. The little blocks are foundation paper pieced and finish at 3". I probably took the papers out a bit early and therefore some of the points aren't quite matching but I decided not to lose sleep over it:-)

I had fun with the quilting - not a free motion foot in sight. After Wendy pointed out the secondary pinwheel pattern (duh, I hadn't picked it up (yet)!), I was inspired to fill the pinwheels with stitching. I quite like the effect.

Then I played with my fancy stitches and the memory button on my machine and did this simple outer border quilting.

I see Temecula Quilt Co is doing another mini Sew Along - this time with stars. As I've done both the others this year, the 12 Days of Christmas and Blessings Baskets (which is still in the quilting stage)I'm thinking, why break a tradition... I may as well join in again!

I received an awesome gift from our son and dil in the post today -

Photos blown up and printed on canvas.
Photo 1 - Mumsy and her Big Boy
Photo 2 - DIL holding the Koala, and me and my 3 kids.

The girls and I recently 'popped over' to Mid-Queensland (Australia) to surprise my Big Boy for his birthday. We had a wonderful time, the surprise was completely a surprise, and these photos will be a fabulous momento of the weekend.

Sneaky peeky

There will be some more gifting going on here (sometime) next week - so it would be nice if you came back then for another visit.....
Until then, happy creating every-body!