pretty swap blocks

When I'm in a block exchange I always look forward to seeing what the other people did for me.  In this case (for the retreat) we were each given a half yard of focus fabric, and our choice from a group of blocks.  In February I showed you the blocks I made (take a look!), which were paper pieced.  Here are the ones I received in the exchange:

My block is the one at the top.  The bottom block

in the photo shows the blue challenge fabric

being used in the lower left side.

Surprisingly, only one other person

used paper piecing for her blocks, it's

the deep blue one at the top right hand side. 

In this set the you can't see the challenge fabric

in the bottom right-hand block but it's at the edge...

Last four.  Don't ask me the names of the blocks, no way

can I tell you!  I only

know they came from Quilters Cache.

Isn't it interesting which fabrics each person chose as a go-along with their piece of challenge fabric?  As long as we included a little piece in our block, we met the challenge.  Some people hadn't finished their blocks, so theirs weren't included in the exchange; it happens.

The day before I left for the retreat I was getting up from the 'puter when I heard this loud POP! and my chair broke.  I was left squattng, peering beneath my desk with the chair seat caught between the backs of my legs and my thighs, yeowww!  It didn't make a pretty picture, I tell you.  Thank God I wasn't tipped backwards with my feet on the stool, I might have gotten seriously hurt. 

I don't know if you can tell, but the metal bracket part between the seat and the bottom part snapped clean in two!  I went and got another one yesterday, but it's not put together yet; soon as I got home it started raining and I didn't want to wrestle the box out of my trunk. 

Well, today is my bee meeting (Wee Bee Quilters), we're having a bag workshop.  I'm not sure what this particular bag looks like, there have been lots of bags but it'll be the first workshop I've done.  These are the fabrics I'm using:

the ugly piece of Northcott on the right will be the lining... what will the finished bag look like?  Stay tuned!

Sew forth and sew on...