Early September as August whizzed past.

I am late with this month’s post, It has been a strange month of family illness and other troubles as well as a poignant trip back to my old home town to visit some old school friends.  It was for my school friend that I made the quilted hanging I am showing you here. She deserved something special and unique just like her so I came up with this.  I knew she loved hearts and pink and purple so that is what she got….

The patchwork was paper pieced on the sewing machine and then I hand quilted the whole thing.  This is a detail of one of the blocks:

I feel the need to get on with items for Christmas so at present I have loomed socks on the go, a mystery loomed shawl,  a ripple blanket and a few smaller items.  I needed a quick item to make last week as I was waiting for the next clue in the mystery shawl I am working on so  I found this pattern (To the Point shawl – available on Ravely – designed by Cheri McEwen) which took me three evenings. I rather like it but nobody wears shawls in my stomping ground and I am not brave enough to stand out from the crowd,

I almost forgot about the other little shawl creation designed by the clever Renee Van Hoy and, once again, available via Ravelry and which came off the loom last month – it is a Wingspan shawl and was a fun pattern to make:

There is a strong sense of Summer being over now so I guess i will be getting lots of time to snuggle on the sofa and finish some things off. I am also going to make sure I harvest seeds from some of my lovely plants in the yard this year such as these gorgeous poppies:

Back in a week or two with hopefully some more finished things.

Big Bang Theory

I finished this quilt recently. I named it ‘Big Bang’  as it reminded me of cosmic explosions and intergalactic phenomena and for a more prosaic reason in that I had just watched the entire boxed set of Big Bang Theory in the space of around 4 weeks. As quilty people probably know, the pattern is actually New York Beauty. I used fabric foundations for the blocks and embellished it with beading as I had been recently inspired by a mini workshop at the Creative stitches show. I love the idea and practice of beading but am not really a jewellery sort of person so needed to find a way to use the lovely colours and textures of the beads in my work. I need to become a better photographer!

Here is a shot showing some of the beading detail.

I love this quilt pattern and have many more ideas for it when I have the time. I am gradually going to show my other finished quilts and their stories.