my quilt of many colours!

At last I have finished my latest quilt...

it is made up of strips of my favourite fabrics, stitched together to form a very long strip, then cut into strips the same length and pieced together to form a block. Altogether there are nine blocks pieced together with white sashing and lilac corner blocks.

My quilts take ages because I quilt them by hand with embroidery thread, I find it very therapeutic (although time consuming) to sit on the sofa stitching the lines of quilting. As my rows are very close together there is an awful lot of stitching, but in future I think I will make them wider and save some time!

The backing is made from a duvet cover that I picked up from a charity shop, it's lovely and soft and the wadding is a medium weight polyester. To finish it off I made a border out of some pretty pink dotty fabric. The overall size is 120cm x 120cm.

It's a lovely quilt, I haven't quite made up my mind what to do with it, whether to keep it or to sell it, it would look lovely on the top of a single bed or as a throw. At the moment it looks pretty gorgeous on the back of one of my armchairs, I've gotta make my mind up soon!

rocking chair chic

remember the second hand rocking chair I bought recently, today I decided that instead of spending all day in the garden, weeding and digging like I did yesterday (and a damn good job I did too!) I am going to do some sewing and what I am going to make is a country style cushion to sit on the rocking chair. I had already decided on the fabric but I couldn't decide on the trimmings, whether to do some piping or frills. Frills won out in the end.

The frills were easy to make although time consuming and fiddly but well worth the effort me thinks!

Rocking chair chic I would say!

Way back in May I promised Joni and Poppy that I would knit them a doll each. I had just made one for Rosie based on this angel doll I made for Christmas.

It was really cute, knitted in DK from a King Cole pattern for an advent calender, this angel sat at the bottom of the calender. It is easy to knit and doesn't take too long, but  having said that it took ages to finish these as I constantly got distracted by lovely new fabrics to try out or something else to knit. I  finished knitting them ages ago but couldn't get motivated to sewing them up, the bit I like least of all! The hair is really fiddly to do, cutting loads of strands about 8ins long and although each one is measured against the next one, they were still uneven when it was ready to be attached to the head. Obviously I am not a precision cutter! And as for the faces, say no more!

 I vary  the colours to make them different. I also match the hair to  who I am giving it to. Rosie has lovely brunette hair and Joni and Poppy have gorgeous strawberry blonde colour hair.

I may not be an artist but at least they are smiling!