Hello Everyone,

We’ve had snow! It didn’t hang around for long though and now we are have rain and more rain. However Spring is not far off and we need to hang on just a little longer.

Since my last post I have been continuing to work on the patterns and fabrics that have been hanging around my sewing room for years. I am determined that the tops of these, at least, are going to completed this year. After the ones I have to show you today, I am down to the last half dozen, each of which need more papers or more fabric or something else I don’t have, though this doesn’t include the pile of more recently begun Scottish themed mini wall quilts, each of them about eight inches square. There are quite a few of those but, for now, I am pretending they don’t exist and have hidden them in a drawer.

While I was checking through my pile of work in progress, I came across these. I quite like tiny tumbler shapes and may have thought they might make attractive rings in Liberty fabric. I have an idea that I might use them to make a meandering path from somewhere to somewhere else, like those games we moved our counters along when we were children.

Talking of children, there are just two more of my Children’s quilts left to put together. One is called ‘Winners Circle’ and features rows of horses, each one different from the other. I made one of the blocks but have now decided to make the horses smaller. The paper pieces I bought for the design between each block are now the wrong size so this quilt will have to go to the back of the queue for now.

The other is ‘Calico Cats’ and here it is, ready to piece together:

The cat fabric on the right will be used for the surrounding border and the fabric at the bottom is for the back of the quilt.

Stashed away in a plastic box I had a Moda Mini Charm Pack that needed using up and a fat quarter of fabric from the same line, which resulted in these two mini quilts:

This is ‘Circle of Friends’ (above) and ‘Mixed Bag’ (below). They both look rather wobbly but that will come right once the pieces are sewn together and a spot of multi coloured big stitch quilting will jazz up the flat grey around the little creatures.

I also had two of the larger Moda Charm Packs hanging around and thought I might use them to work with shapes I haven’t tried before. So, here is the beginnings of ‘A Musical Affair’ in octagons, which I think will become be a runner.

And here is ‘Zen Chic’, a small table topper in elongated hexagons. I have some matching fabric that I could use as a border (shown below) but I think it’s too fussy. I think I will use a solid or tone on tone fabric that matches one of the colours in the quilt instead, perhaps the purple.

Another charm pack I had was’ Country Life’ (shown below). I am a bit obsessed by circular patterns at the moment, so I have used it to make a ‘Circle of Country Friends’ who are scattered around this silver grey fabric. I expect that it will not have escaped your notice that I like to use shades of grey as background fabrics, ha ha. I think they allow lighter or brighter colours to pop forwards. The square in the centre looks a bit lonely, doesn’t it? Perhaps the quilting will liven it up.

I have five more charm pack quilts in progress but as this post is getting rather long, I will show you those in my next post.

Below is a pattern I really love and another of my favourite circular patterns. I have quite a few shapes in paper templates so I laid the pattern out on my desk. It is worth having a few packets of different shaped papers to be able to move the pieces around and design your own patterns. It’s less tedious than drawing them.

I want to fussy cut a hare, or rabbits or birds into each of the house shapes that rotate around the centre and add in other coordinating fabrics that will lend it a woodland theme. This will be quite a large quilt (about 36 inches square) and actually a size I am beginning to like more and more. Room for a little more drama!

I have collected fabrics for three different variations of this quilt and I like them all so much, I am tempted to make three versions of the same quilt. I haven’t done that before. Here they are, Winter Hare, Spring Rabbit and Little Birds. Which one do you like?

I think these are quite enough quilts for one day, or I will risk boring you to death. If you ever have any questions, please ask. I will try my best to answer them.

I hope that by the time my next post is ready, the sun will be shining and warming us all up. Until then, keep cosy and keep stitching!