I'm so glad I joined the scrappy pincushion swap. There is just something so succinct about a pincushion—it's small, it's stickable, and that's about all the requirements there are. Pincushions were some of the first things I made and fell in love with when I started blogging. I loved (and still love) how diverse and how special they are. Highly detailed or not, I can't help admiring their utilitarian loveliness.

My pincushion went out to my partner today. I am at the tail end of the swap, but not late. I hope she loves it—it was hard to put in the box! The felt bunny pattern is from Japanese craft book ISBN 9784529047869, which is chock full of adorable animals you can stitch up in felt. The rest of the pincushion came from my scrap basket—it was a scrappy swap, after all. I kind of want to make an entire army of these now. Pincushion group shots really get me.

Our little family has been busy flitting here and there on many a weekend during these last couple months. It's gymnastics competition season (yup, we do that) and this season seems to involve more far-off travel than last. Much to my luck, this weekend's meet dropped me into Erin's neighborhood, where we were able to get together. Yay! She and her daughter Kate, and Eva and I drank coffee (well, the girls didn't have coffee) and talked in a cute coffee shop with a subdued owl theme. Fun, of course. It's so cool to read someone's blog and then get to realize that they talk in the same voice that they write. As lovely as you would expect.

There were presents--pincushions! Because let's face it, we all could use another pincushion. There's always room for just one more. The photo up top is my present from Erin--adorable Last Minute Quilted Gifts pincushion and Denyse Schmidt fabric to boot! I don't have a decent photo of the one I made Erin, but she does. :-) The half-square triangles were scraps I had left over from my mini quilt, and the other fabrics were more Pop Garden.

Eva was funny on the way to the coffee shop. I was asking her what she thought it would be like to meet another kid whose mom had a craft blog. She said they could talk about their moms' Material Obsession. Indeed.

Some very long time ago, Meg and I started one quilt. I'll speak for myself, but I imagine it goes for many, and I'll say that it was harder than I thought it was going to be to keep things going each month. And here you have the evidence: This block is Sarah's block, for which she sent out the fabric nearly one year ago. Oh my! Thankfully, we're just a nice and understanding bunch of people. Also thankfully, this is the last block I owe at the present. At some point, I want to make mosaics of each participant's blocks, but I'm going to wait on it some more and see what happens.

Sarah's fabrics were such a good mix to work with. This quilt from a past Toko Quilt Festival was the inspiration. It is such a beautiful quilt. The part that Sarah wanted to build on was the idea of areas of densely pattered patchwork and areas of tonal patchwork. It's always fun to play with others' ideas.

Maitreya sent lots of fun green fabrics for her one quilt block, and really the only thing she asked was that we incorporate the letter M, for her love of typography. I decided to do four different Ms using embroidery, and because I tend to dawdle with embroidery, it took a while to complete, but here it is—Yay!

I am thoroughly enjoying the long weekend. This is the third day of sleeping in, and it feels pretty good. I don't really even have an agenda for today, which is so unlike me, but I did a lot of the agenda-type stuff yesterday. Maybe we'll do a group craft—who knows? Hope things are equally chill in your neck of the woods.

-Dorie

Last year, I so loved seeing all the pretty things that came in from Meg's mobile swap, and this year I decided to join.

I didn't have too much of a plan. I wanted to have dangly cloth parts (I used Martha Stewart's strawberry pincushion as a template), and I wanted to have felt balls, and I wanted to make the circular kind. My partner wanted something colorful, and I think this fits the bill OK. Actually, I started out with red, yellow, orange, and pink, the colors in the tweed strawberry shape. Funny how it always comes back to blue, red and gray for me.

Of course, a nice thing about swaps is you get a present back. This is what I got from Liz. Isn't it cool? She used paint chips for all the different grays and blues. Very lovely indeed.

These are Eva's contributions to the Kids ATC Swap. She really enjoyed participating--making her own art and then receiving envelopes from around the world. I'm so glad that Blair and Erin put it together. Thanks guys--900 swappers is a lot of work!

I totally expected Eva to choose collage for her medium, as she had been doing a lot of that around Christmas. Instead, she went with pencil drawing of presidents and American-ish stuff, I think highly influenced by recent subjects at school. Parents, we never know, but we are always tickled. So there you have it: Abe Lincoln, George Washington, Barak Obama, the American flag, and the Statue of Liberty.

Also related to famous historic figures, Elie and Eva made some kick-butt Hamentaschen this weekend. Mmmm-mmm. Purim is on Tuesday, and this is how we're marking the occasion. In case you're not familiar with them, Hamentaschen are cookies that are shaped like Hamen's (a wicked, wicked man) hat. The centers are filled with something tasty and sweet. Elie's favorite filling is poppyseed, so we have a lot of that, and our Hamentashen are made with bread dough and not cookie dough. You could do it either way.

I love this project, I really do. For the latest border, I followed Jennifer's designs for the bricks instead of the half square triangles. I strayed a bit on the placement, so my version took more time and fabric that hers, but it is pretty much the same. I like it. The flickr group of everyone's quilts is amazing. They're the same, but oh, so different—it's so inspiring.

And speaking of same but different, the first round of one quilt blocks are starting to come in. I love the places these talented women have taken the fabrics I sent them. It's amazing. Like I think I said, I plan on setting them on point. I'll have 12 blocks, so I think I'll line them up 3x4 with solid spacer blocks in between. I think I can stretch it to a bed quilt that way. But what color shall I use for the spacer?

I wore my green oxford dress out yesterday and it worked pretty well. I had some gap-osis in the top, but I think I can fix it, and when I cut a size smaller, it should be taken care of. It did not blow away. :-)

So you know the Virtual Quilting Bee, that wonderful communal-ish quilting project started by Mama Urchin and completed by 11 talented others? I loved that idea. So did Meg. Together, Meg and I decided to start a similar project, which we're calling one quilt.

It's the same premise—12 talented quilting women make one quilt block each month. Each woman is in charge of sending the starter fabrics out for one month, and she then receives the fruits of that month's labors. So each woman receives 12 quilt blocks, enough for one quilt.

See the participants and follow our progress in our flickr group.

It's going to be fun.

This is what I received in the very last round of the CU later swap. It's made by the amazing Jill. It's all bunny, all super soft angora. My tactile child and I keep rubbing it on our cheeks. It is so good. She didn't say, but I suspect that it came at least in part from yarn Jill spun from her rabbits. She can do that, I know. See, I kinda want a rabbit that has hair that can be spun. I've had a crush on one since sheep and wool 2003. (I don't spin.) So I heard about Jill from friends long before I actually met her because she was really doing the rabbit thing.

Should I get a rabbit?

Have you seen the disapproving rabbits? Nope. No sir. I disapprove.

Dang, Lotta, your book is good.

I finally got Jeanne, now of Texas, as a partner in the CU later swap. She was my very last partner. The swap is now over. This bag went to her. The fabric showed up on my doorstep like six months ago, a generous little gift from petulant feminine, who was destashing. (She's not blogging now, but I owe her a postcard if only I knew where to send it!) Anyway, this fabric has been softly chanting Jeanne's name since the moment it arrived. It's been telling me things like, "Make me into something and I will be sweet plum pudding love!" Seriously. And now all its dreams have come true. It is the Lotta Jansdotter all-day tote, and it is in Jeanne's hands.

I only made one change to the bag, which is lengthening the handles. It needed to be a shoulder bag. Bags are generally more useful if they can be both toted and shouldered. I love the side pocket, and the bottle pocket. I also really like the little clippy key thing. I may someday make myself one of these. It would be really good for Saturdays when we leave the house early and come home late.