In Your Words blog hop and GIVEAWAY!

Welcome to my stop in the In Your Words blog hop!  I am so happy you are here (feel free to stay a while, look around and enter the giveaway!) and am thrilled to be sharing the day with these fine people too:

Life in the Scrapatch

Just Sew Sue

Nati's Little Things

Amy's Crafty Shenanigans - you are here!

Pig Tales and Quilts

Scrappy 'n Happy

Little Mushroom Cap

Moosestash Quilting

Sowing Stitches

Just Quilt It 

Thank you to Linda of Buzzing and Bumbling and Mdm Samm of Sew We Quilt for being awesome cheerleaders and organisers extraordinaire of this fun blog hop!!   

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The idea behind In Your Words was to incorporate a word (one or more) into a project which revealed who you were or perhaps shared more about you.  Now that I find myself typing my explanation about my project, I am at a loss for words!!  I'm beginning to think the words I used on my '4 Things' quilt share too much about me and all of a sudden I am feeling a bit shy!!  Here is my quilt top:

'4 Things' quilt top

My quilt top has these four words:

LOVE  ~  AFFECTION  ~  ATTENTION  ~  PRAISE

When I sketched my idea, I knew instantly what words I wanted to piece for my quilt.  I decided to make it a low-volume quilt with lots of text fabrics with the words in colour -- in my favourite colours in fact [red, navy, aqua and lime green]!!  I have added a few other blocks in that I adore - the wonky stars and wonky houses, the wonky tree, the quirky bird and a mod flower.  This quilt is everything I love!!  And those are the words that I had to have!  I made the word 'LOVE' first, in capital letters using dotty fabric, some plaids and pin fabric!

Love and quirky bird

Then I made 'affection' in all lower case letters using any aqua fabric I had.  'ATTENTION' was made using all capitals and was paper pieced using the Quilters Cache free blocks in some Oakshott, Joel Dewberry and Parson Grey fabrics - yum!  The other words were all made up free-form with inspiration from my Word Play Quilts book.

Affection, attention and praise

And I love the word 'praise' done in lower case.  The long tail on the letter p in yummy lime and citrus greens is fab!  So fresh - especially with that super mini wonky star beside it!

Praise with super mini wonky red star

These four words are the 'four things' that I would like to give more of in 2013.  They are also the four things I would like to receive in 2013!!  I believe most people need these four things in their lives -- along with food, water and shelter of course!

Oakshott and Kaffe stars

I loved making this quilt top.  It was so liberating to sew my scraps together and all sorts of fabrics that I had here in the pile!  I was inspired by the low-volume quilts I have seen around blog-land and finally made myself one!  I even managed to incorporate a few orphan blocks into the quilt which means I am working on shrinking my WiP list as well!  Yay!

Wonky houses and tree with clouds.  Cloud fabric from Maze & Vale, Etsy

So far, this quilt top measures 57" x 68" and I hope to add a border to each side to give it a little frame before I sandwich it etc.  I'm not sure how I will quilt this quilt yet - I want the words to stand out but not be too overpowering.  I know the word 'affection' is hard to read so I may have to do something to improve that.  I can't wait to have it completed!  So there you have it - my '4 Things' quilt :)

A mod flower

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I also have a giveaway!  For a chance to win a 20"x22" (fat quarter) of Rich Red Kona and a 20"x34" piece of this texty London fabric (it is almost home-dec weight - perfect for zippy pouches and cushions), please leave me a comment telling me what the weather is doing where you are!  The temperature is dropping here in London - we may even have 'winter' soon!  My giveaway is open internationally!  Feel free to leave a second comment if you are a follower.  Winner will be chosen randomly and announced on the 17th January.  Good luck to you all!

Win these fabrics!

Thank you for popping in today to see my In Your Words blog hop project and do pop back to Mdm Samm's blog each day for more chances to win!  Happy hopping!

Also linking up with WiP Wednesday!  And with Plum & June.