More Stitchy Pies were always on the cards. I made one for Le Challenge and won $25 voucher for the Fat Quarter Shop. Can’t be bad!

But I needed another for my letter pins and whilst making one it really was not much harder work making two, and I wanted to make a thank you gift to Sue who sweetly sent me some fabric. What quilter doesn’t need a needle case! The children decided that the blue/green was the nicest so that got sent off.

This time I wanted a pieced look and had the idea of using a couple of blocks I had made up to see whether I could be bothered to make 20 of them for a quilt (no I couldn’t be bothered so they were promptly orphaned!).

These are so quick and easy to make – here’s the pattern from Lucy of Charm About You.

Next up is a new pincushion. I’ve managed to lose my favourite one, quite how I don’t know as my sewing room is not vast. Just a simple square made up of scraps.

And finally who wasn’t moved by this tragedies of the last couple of weeks.  In terms of scale it’s hard to imagine the loss of 50 people at the hands of one individual. Lives cut short on a night of fun and relaxation. I was touched that within hours the local Modern Quilting Guild in Orlando had set up an initiative to provide quilts to those affected. To support them I’ve made some heart blocks and Esther at IG#esthermoorely is kindly doing a group collection from the UK. And then an up and coming Labour MP and who genuinely  cared about the disadvantaged was shot and killed outside the library in a sleepy Yorkshire town by another very disturbed man with a hate agenda.  It’s very hard to fathom that mindless violence causes such widespread and long lasting damage to family and friends of the victims. This time the Leeds modern quilt group have requested wonky cross blocks to make quilts for Jo Cox’s children and family.  Those are on the to do list for this week.

I also made some maple leaf blocks for the Fort McMurray forest fire which devastated this town and resulted in 80,000 people being evacuated and many people returning to damaged property or losing everything.  There was a certain sense of history repeating itself as I read an article in a quilting magazine recently about exactly the same thing happening but this time the Canadian Red Cross organising  quilts to be made for the bombed out families in the UK during World War 2.  Although as some of these were blocks were made of hand pieced 1.5″ inch squares, the amount of effort put in by those Canadian women in the 1940’s puts my own effort to shame! But it just shows that quilts have been used to express sympathy and practical support for a long, long time.

Of course the real reason I have embraced  these mini projects this week is that I avoiding the Herculean task of quilting no. 1 son’s massive quilt, with batting and fleece backing …. Not looking forward to it. But he is nagging me so I will have to get started.