Final Hoop Up Embroidery + Quilt Album Winner

OK, so it's been a while. Life happens, and May was a crazy month. Insanity at the day job, my son's 5th birthday, houseguests in the form of my visiting mother, brother, and future sister-in-law, Easter, taxes, the release of Fat Quarterly Issue #5, some super secret sewing commitments, Spring Quilt Market prep, and generally helping to keep our household afloat as my wife careens towards finishing the first year of her PhD program have all conspired to keep me away from the Quilt Dad blog for the past few weeks. I do have lots to share though, so I hope to get at least a few more posts up this week.

First, I realized (embarrassingly) that I hosted a giveaway and never posted the winner! The winner of the Quilt Album software package was Andrea, who blogs at Random Musings. (Andrea was notified right away, but I never got back here to announce it.) Congratulations, Andrea! You can find a list of all of the Quilt Album winners on Pat Sloan's blog here.

And because no post is complete without pictures, allow me to share the final piece I made for the Hoop Up! Stitch & Send embroidery swap over on Flickr. I made this piece for the super talented Amy in Australia, better known as badskirt-amy to her Flickr friends:

Amy's requested theme for her embroidery pieces was Roadside. She wanted the themes of vintage, adventure, and quirkyness to come through in the finished pieces, and you can read more about her theme (and her gocco adventures) here.

I decided to keep my piece pretty simple in an attempt to be more graphic, and embellished the piece with a piece of fabric from Basic Grey's Basics line that I fused on and secured with a machine blanket stitch. All in all I think it turned out OK, but in retrospect I wish I had added more detail for Amy ... especially because I took SO long and was late getting it back to her. I think she deserved more than what I delivered.

Have you ever sent off a swap piece and immediately wished you could have it back? One that you felt wasn't quite "up to snuff"?