Given and Gotten

This was a week for gift exchanges. At last month's Portland Modern Quilt Guild meeting, I drew Wendy's scraps out of the bag. They looked like this.

I was kind of freaked out by the fact that the only print was something I would probably never buy for myself. And that there were only four fabrics total. We were only allowed to add one additional fabric. I decided to make fabric buckets.We were to bring our gifts to this month's meeting.

I followed most of the instructions on this tutorial at Ric Rac. However, my passable grasp of high school geometry led me to cut my fabric to a width of 17.75" instead of the longer measurement she gave. This worked nearly perfectly.

I was quite delighted that Wendy came to claim them with her young son, who promptly put one on his head as a hat. I wish I had a picture of that.

I'm totally doing this again. I want twenty of these.

For my gift, I received a quilted gift from Brittany. I had given her a baggie of Echino squares and coordinating solids.

Isn't it vibrant? 

I asked her not to be offended that I liked the back slightly more but how cool is that quilting echoing perfectly around the bus?

Now for work. My "secret spy" got me two new cherry prints, which I have decided are my new obsession.

For my own secret spy responsibility, I did some sewing. Pretty much everyone who works in my family planning clinic thinks the bags at Safe Sax are fabulous. However, because we're all working in a family planning clinic none of us can afford them. I thought it would be well received if I could sew one. So I got some colored condoms and...

I did! Working with vinyl is like kind of like working with Saran wrap. But it took just over an hour thanks to some keen planning. It's about 8x9 inches and I sewed it with a gusset, though I think it would have worked just as well to do a boxed corner design.

It was well received! Hope your week is going well. We got Christmas packages mailed today and that is a good feeling indeed.