Engerl

I signed up for the personality swap in 2003 and then heard nothing of it for a long time. That was OK by me as I didn't get on very fast with my UFOs last year and I really want to get them (or most of them) out of the way this year as I've been very good at not starting anything new for quite a while now. At least, until Rita announced the personality swap again at the beginning of 2004 and 30 or so people signed up! Well, I'm not one to give up or withdraw so I started thinking about what I could do which says "this is me". Well, I like fiddly pieces, using lots of different shades and using tone in tone fabrics. I like foundation piecing and I like hand appliqué. The first international swap I took part in also involved flying geese and I have a couple of flying geese quilts already finished - it's sort of a trade mark. So that's what I came up with - flying geese in the shape of an H for Helen, not straight though but a bit "schräg" (which in German means slanting as well as "slightly odd") with colours shading in from one to the next. Now just why purple came out I don't know - I was planning on doing blue or green, but I guess I must have discovered that I had a lot of purples in my stash (6" square size at least!) which made it easier to get the shading to go round in a big circle. Once I'd started my prototype I soon discovered that it was going to take me absolutely ages to get thirty of them done, even with some chain piecing... So I'm going to do different versions of the same principle. I don't think that any hand appliqué will make it onto them, but who knows!!!! Hope I don't run out of purple though!