Brambleberry Ridge Giveaway!

I rarely run giveaways on my blog, but with one in October and one in December, it may seem as though all the buses have arrived here at once. I know you probably would have actually withered away to a sad little heap if you were actually stood waiting at a bus stop for two months…but it's relative. Anyway, the Number 8 bus has arrived. (Say what?! There's 8 fat quarters in the stack I'm about to give away and it's quite a nice bulbous-looking number, so if a bus has to stop at my blog, then I'd have a preference for it being the Number 8).

This is a glorious little stack of Violet Craft's Brambleberry Ridge, that Elephant in my Handbag, one of my blog sponsors, are offering up to you. Stephanie and Jo were kind enough to let me take my pick of what I wanted to share with you and I was really keen to see this fabric collection in strokeable proximity (but don't let that put you off!) and thought you might love it too.

Brambleberry Ridge is actually several hundred times nicer than I even imagined it to be and I'm feeling slightly pained by having to give it away. It's partly a tactile thing. I'd anticipated a fabric with so much gold printing to feel a little crispier than regular quilting cotton (the golds I've come into contact with in the past often have), but it's actually entirely the opposite. To me, this cotton feels slightly more silky and fine than standard quilting cotton (I can't determine whether it is actually a different base cloth or not and I'm not familiar enough with Micheal Miller fabrics generally to be able to compare it against their other lines - this may just be how their fabrics feel, or it could be the effect of the gold - either way, it's lovely and my husband agrees that I'm not imagining it and that it's curiously softer than my other quilting cottons in his period of brief enforced fabric stroking). It's just really quite divine.

And then there's the colours…these two above are my favourite. I just think they're perfection. They remind me of peppermint creams (which are also perfection).

I remember my mother giving me my first peppermint cream when I was about four years old on the long journey north to see relatives. She passed it through the gap in the front seats to where I was sitting in the dark with my sister in the back of our little Alfa Sud and when I put it in my mouth and it melted on my tongue, my little four-year-old tastebuds and mind may have actually imploded. Even now, handmade peppermint creams are one of my favourite foods on earth, although I don't think I've ever tasted any as good as the ones that I ate on that late night journey. My mother had bought them at a school fate or cake sale earlier that day and I've never been able to recreate a peppermint cream that tastes quite as perfect, but if you'd like my almost perfect recipe for the ones above, you can find it in my archives here. They are delicious (she said, immodestly).

Anyway, these gorgeous fabrics are currently sitting on the back of my chair (in a non-leant-upon way - I'm slightly clueless as to why I chose a chair with a back, as I never actually sit back when I'm typing or sewing, but I really adore this chair, so it possibly earned its place for aesthetic reasons) until I post them off to one of you.

Here's what you have to do to enter: just tell me one of your own memories - adult or childhood - of an amazing meal or food that you still long to recreate exactly or can still almost taste when you think of it. Or indeed, if there's a certain fabric collection that reminds you of a certain food I'd love to hear about that too.

Florence x

Ps. The latter suggestion makes me think that's some odd variation of colour synesthesia (where names and words are linked in the person's mind by colour - I have this and I'm guessing a lot of visual thinkers do too). Fabric Eatesthesia?

Pps. You can currently get 10% off at Elephant in my Handbag using the code 'FLOSSIE'.