Hello Everybody!

I did say I was going to disappear during May to make some changes to my garden but I have only managed a couple of mornings. It’s been cold wet and windy, despite the intermittent sunshine – certainly not what I consider pleasurable gardening weather. So this post is to show you some of what else I have been doing and also to let you know that there have been some changes to this site.

You may have noticed that my web address has changed. I have finally got around to purchasing my own domain, so the address for Forest Moor Designs is now forestmoordesigns.com. This is because I hope to set up a shop with a little of my work listed under different categories, to allow visitors to make a purchase if they choose to do so. I will also have an email dedicated to the site, so that if you want to contact me about any of my work you can do so.

It is slow going I am afraid. I’m not much of a techie person and there is so much to read and familiarise myself with. It sounds easy enough in the guide but by the time I have reached the page to make changes, I can’t find what I am looking for, or I can’t remember all the steps. At the moment I have some of the same information on both my Home page and my Blog page and this needs attention, among other things, so I hope you will bear with me while I make the necessary changes. My blog posts should be coming to you as usual but if this doesn’t seem to be happening, please get in touch and let me know.

Last week I happened to be doing a brief online workshop with a textile artist called Saima Kaur who, inspired by Indian folk art, creates embroidered narratives on bright background fabrics, often with text. This seemed to be a good way to use up some of the bright solids and prints I no longer use. When I first started quilting, I bought lots of bright fabrics because I intended to make quilts for babies and young children but I no longer want to do this, having found that I enjoy making very small wall quilts instead, with a more subtle colour palette.

I had the idea of making a small improvised Log Cabin quilt with bright embroidered centres. By improvised I mean that the pieces that make up each block will be slightly random; different in size and shape and placed irregularly within the background – unlike the multiple rigid box shapes that you see, one inside the other, in traditional Log Cabin patterns.

Here is a very rough pencil sketch of what I have in mind:

When my daughter sends me a card for any occasion, she decorates the inside of them with little coloured drawings of animals, to make me smile. I decided to embroider these drawings onto bright solid fabrics so that each one would form the centre of one of the Log Cabin blocks. I have chosen to use four bright Moda Bella solids, pink, green, red and possibly gold, the sorts of colours found in Indian folk art, with a view to having three embroideries on each colour background, so twelve blocks in all. All of embroideries will co-ordinate with the printed fabric that will surround them.

Each of the drawings has a playful, almost circus theme. Here are the first three, on pink:

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There is lots more to do. I shall probably add more to the ones I have done, too, especially filling in the backgrounds with small dots or stars. I want them to be bright and busy.

Here is an example of one of the co-ordinating fabrics; they are Indian cotton, striped and checked fabrics that I bought years ago. I am not sure they will lend themselves to English Paper Piecing as they are rougher and thinner, with a looser weave than the high quality cottons I usually use, but they suit the theme. I’ll see how it goes.

English Paper Pieces for a traditional log cabin design can be bought from linapatchwork.com, and it’s easy to use parts of it to design a non-traditional one. Alternatively you can ask Nancy to make pieces for you according to your own pattern.

I hope by the time I write my next post that my website will be beginning to look and behave as I want it to. In the meantime, I will work towards faster progress with it – and my garden!

Till next time…