More giveaways! My real work..

There is a beautiful giveaway of a quilt in the most exquisite colors at http://mariemadelinestudio.typepad.

Back at work today after a lazy holiday yesterday. In Sri Lanka apart from the Saturday and Sunday weekend, we also have a once a month holiday for Poya day. Poya signifies the day of the full moon for that month and is a day of religious observances for Buddhists. Of course it becomes a day of rest and relaxation and doing the million chores around the house for everyone else!!!

I finished my first baby quilt and have now pieced and basted the second ready for quilting. I am not so happy with the second one as I feel the colors do not quite go together. I am still a novice at the color matching and most probably will learn only with time.... There is such a world of quilts out there, one more beautiful than the next and some of them look so easy and pretty to start with that one is constantly tempted. I dont want to land with a whole heap of unfinished projects so have to think carefully of what I want to do next before I start.

Am solely tempted by the disappearing 9 patch as I do have some fabric that I think would be suitable for this but then there is another beautiful quilt design I saw on some blog. Plain white squares interspersed with a white square on which a pink heart had been appliqued and the whole thing quilted in swirls and hearts! My description is not as good as it looked.

I have been also neglectful of my work involving the sponsorship of children from poverty stricken homes and really should work harder at this as well. Its a project I started years and years ago - getting sponsors for children from poor families and trying to help them out even for a year or two at least to get them on their feet mainly for schooling. Schooling in this country is free for everyone, with even free uniforms being given once a year or rather the fabric to make the uniform and school text books also given free. However, shoes and socks, the other books, the pens and pencils and the bus fares all add up and some families find it tough when you have two children or more to find the money for all these added expenses. I was fortunate that this week two sponsors turned up out of the blue from overseas, and through a series of contacts of a friend of a friend found their way to me and in turn to four children which is such a godsend. Two of the kids lost their father just six months ago to a heart attack and since the children are only 7 and 5 it is difficult for the mother to find full time work as she has to be around when the younger child gets back from school by noon. The father was just 36 and the mother is just 30 so its a very young family to face tragedies so very soon in life.

The other family are in better circumstances with the father and mother both there for two little girls aged 10 and 5. The father works as a labourer whilst the mother is a stay at home mum. It is almost impossible to manage on a single person's earnings these days and hence they seek help.

So these two families have been taken care of so I now have to work harder to find people for the others on my list!

The weekend is coming up and looking forward to that and more sewing.