Patches of Destruxion

Hello everybody! Just sneaking this in before the end of August, here is this month's block. It was a very simple quick one, using the free Heart Crossed pattern by In Color Order . As with all of these blocks, the pattern is for a whole quilt. To turn it into a block, I decided on a simple 9-patch, with four crosses. Here is my fabric pull. I was going for coherent, with a bit of a scrappy feel. I decided on just the one colour for the crosses (the pink) and attempted a purple-blue-green colour gradient from top to bottom with the background squares. It also gave me an excuse to cut into my newly-acquired piece of Pinkerville fabric and to fussy cut a Loch Ness Monster. I have been working quite slowly this month, as I have had the kids off school. The pattern itself came together quickly, but I worked in such small bursts that it took me over three weeks. It is easily doable in an evening, even working by hand like me. Here's a couple of in-progress shots. ...

Hello Everybody! I actually finished a quilt! Only a miniature quilt. But it's finished, nonetheless. This is Sunflower Field. This is my entry into the Near To Nature mini quilt challenge organised by The Little House of Patchwork  in aid of the RSPB . For the challenge we were all sent a pin badge of a British bird or countryside animal, and we had to make a mini quilt inspired by and including the pin. I was sent this little greenfinch. A bit of Googling and image searching revealed greenfinches to be fond of eating sunflower seeds. I had also seen som lovely EPP sunflowers by Anne at Three Goobers . I did some sketches and decided to do a little field with sunflowers in three different sizes to create an illusion of depth. The maximum size for the challenge was 9x12 inches, so it was clear from the outset I was going to need some very small sunflowers indeed. I started with the largest size, based on a 0.75 inch hexie centre. I created templates for the petals...

Hello everyone! I am running a couple of weeks behind with this sewalong and have not been particularly productive this past month. This is not through lack of inspiration or motivation, but more because I have been focussing on other things. Especially my kids who are off school/preschool for the holidays. So I have only made the minimum 4 for July's theme of hobbies and I didn't get them completed in time for the end-of-month giveaway. Here are my four blocks. I kicked off the month with this block, representing my two musical instruments: piano and violin. Music was very much more than a hobby for me for my childhood and teen years. I spent a lot of time not only practising my instruments but at various choir, orchestra, play and musical rehearsals, and playing church organ at mass. I found a couple of old photos - the first one is of me and my sister playing the recorder. I am the one on the right with the tenor (big) recorder. The second is of a Music Theory ...

Hello everyone! I had the fun of going to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham again this year. I love this event, there are so many beautiful quilts to see. Overall, I thought the selection and standard was pretty high this year, but compared to last year there was a distinct lack of EPP quilts.  I hope EPP isn't starting to go out of fashion! Even if it does, it's not going to stop me from doing it. One of these days I am going to actually finish something and exhibit it myself. Here is a round up of my personal highlights from this year.  All photos by me, except for the two indicated as being taken by my mother, Theresa Higgins. First up, the fussy cutting sewalong group quilt! Members of the sewalong sent blocks to Naomi Clarke , the host, and she put them all together into a beautiful quilt. This is the second year we have done this. This time we stitched fussy cut red hexie flowers and embroidered a word to say what the sewalong meant to us personally. Here's m...