Bee Happy

As many of you know, I am taking part in my first Bee soon, Brit Bee Stingy. A couple of weeks ago the bees all swapped pincushions with each other.
I made one of my Mega Pinnies for Nicky, and had one or two comments asking for a tutorial.

Well, I had this project on the back burner for a class in the future, but then I thought, Bee Nice. As we are all approaching that mad season, I really, really, don't have time to make another and do all the pics for a tute, BUT, I have written up a pattern and popped it into Google Drive so if you click here, you should be able to download a copy of the instructions.If you like it, maybe you could spread the love?

Our Stingy Bees are currently making little fabric baskets for each other in a Secret Santa Swap.

We are all following the same pattern by the brilliant Ayumi at Pink Penguin. I went for a sort of modern Christmas look that might be ok the rest of the year too.We are to fill our mini hampers with goodies, but nothing too extravagant, us being stingy bees an' all.

These are really sweet wee baskets, the patchwork is made from 2" squares so real scope for using the smallest of scraps, the finished baskets can be filled with all sorts of goodies for different themed gifts.

I have also made my scrappy item for my partner in the Scrappy Swap 2 - I decided to make a book or journal cover. I made it to fit an A5 sketchbook I have and it's a great fit but bought an A5 notebook yesterday and it is a mighty tight fit - grrrr.

Lastly, some of you lovely readers might recall the Mystery Quilt........this was a super quilt project that I ran in class back in 2008 as a proper Mystery. Then, last year, I also ran it, through this blog, as a Mystery project. Since then I have had a few enquiries about the pattern and have sent a few  copies out to those who have asked so nicely.

But, marketing the pattern has also been on the old back burner and finally, yesterday, I popped the whole pattern onto my Etsy shop. If you haven't come across Mystery Stars before, it is an eclectic mix of different sized star blocks, some rotary cut and others foundation pieced. If you go HERE you will find the flickr group of all the lovely quilts made by my brave blogging friends. And if you go HERE you will see the beautiful versions made by the pattern pioneers in my classes.