Giving Thanks

Michele over at Quilting Gallery has organised a 'Giving Thanks' blog hop Party. Now you know I love a party so I had to join in. The party is running from today until November 26th so there will be loads of time to hop around and visit everyone. Also it's a party with give aways so lots of chances at the end to leave with goody bags. 

As it's a 'giving thanks' party I started thinking what particular things, events or people I was particularly thankful for. I have to start with my family and in particular my mom.

I can't make this picture any bigger as it is an old photo of me and mom taken years ago when I was about 7 or 8, that I scanned in. Mom is important not only because she was my mom but because she taught me to love sewing, knitting and lots of other crafts.  She also taught me the importance of passing on those skills to my family and here is Lucy my younger daughter working on her first quilt.

I love her look of concentration. 

I am also giving thanks to all those quilters who show their quilts and share the beauty of their creations. Last year I visited the Festival of Quilts at the NEC Birmingham UK. There were so many beautiful quilts on display. These help to inspire us and encourage us to try new techniques. Blogland also provides all that inspiration as in blogland everyday can be a mini quilt show day. I love the linky party as you can visit lots of people all in one place and the blog hops encourage me to make smaller projects to a deadline. Over the last 12 months I've taken part in several blog hops organised by Madame Samm at Sew We Quilt. 

There was 'In your own Words' For this I made my knitting bag. This is currently bulging at the seams with my Christmas knitting.

The 'All about me' hop was great fun. I created me as a cover for my quilt patterns folder.

For the 'Dare to Dresden I created a cushion to match my Dresden plate quilt which I finished in time for the hop.

The Nancy Drew 'Is it a clue' hop quilt. Those question marks took ages to appliqué on even though I used the machine.

For 'Shake your Pom Poms' I created this mini quilt for the Rainbow, Brownie and Guide notice board.

The quilt I made for  the 'for the birds' hop is still waiting to be quilted. I must get this finished as it is for my husband to keep in his car. It will be useful now the weather has turned colder when he goes bird watching.

Finally my little table topper for 'Christmas in July'. 

Of course there's lots of other things to give thanks for . All family members of course - here's a photo of my son.

Friends we make along the way,

Our pets, particularly those ones that just have to help with the quilting process. Here are my two helpers, Picasso

and Scamp.

There are also all the lovely swaps we receive. My Gardem mini from Kim in the USA

From Scarlett in Chile

Scarlett also made me this cute pouch that I use to keep the piece of embroidery I'm working on clean and safe.

The mug rug swap. I'll have to add the name of the person who made these later as I can't find the post with the information on.

The April showers, May flowers mini by Rebecca from Canada

The mug rugs from Meg in Japan plus coffee mug and coffee.

Once you get started giving thanks you realise there is so much to be thankful for. I've just kept my post to quilting but I could have gone on for ages about all sorts of things but you have lots more people to visit so I'm going to stop here with a final thank you to all of you who visit my blog and all my lovely followers.

This party has a give away and mine is these two batik fat quarters.

I will ship internationally. To enter you just need to leave a comment. It would be great if you wanted to follow my blog but you don't have to for the give away. The give away will close at midnight EST on November 26th (for those of you in the UK this is 5am GMT on Nov 27th).

Now you need to go back to Quilting Gallery by clicking here or using the party button at the right at the top of this page so you can visit everyone else. Good luck in the give away and I hope you visit again soon.

Have a great day.

Lyndsey