This last week has been a week of batik, little squares and another new sewing and quilting experience, alongside some fabulous weekend weather and special walks with my beautiful Oscar boy!
I am a new quilter and am learning with the help of my dear pal Helen (Josiekitten), who is always willing to share her workshop experiences with me. I love sewing almost as much as knitting, but do less of it as there is always the upheaval of getting everything out and packing it all away again. I know, I really do need a crafting room! To be honest, what is there not to like when you have a charm pack of beautiful batiks to work with.
Having stitched nine charm squares into a three by three larger square six times over, each large square is then quartered to give twenty four smaller squares as seen above. I usually agonise over the best layout, trying to balance patterns and colours but this little beauty just seemed to organise itself.
After lining, backing and making then sewing the edging............. ta da!!!! Here it is! What do you think? I'm pretty pleased with myself.
I'm loving the colour and pattern mix and so pleased I eventually decided to go with the blue backing and edging. It finishes the quilt off perfectly.
There is still the little matter of actually quilting the finished piece, which I plan to do this coming week. The rows of stitches that you can see are merely securing the wadding to the patchwork top.
Oscar supervised the entire process, right down to helping to hang it on the linen line in the garden for a photo. By the look on his face, he is so so wishing the quilt will be for him! He's not really a big fan of the pinks though.
This weekend brought glorious sunshine to our days and the younger Miss Snoops home for a visit. She loves walking Oscar and we enjoyed some super sunny, long walks. He sustained a very deep cut in his right front paw three weeks ago and needed stitches. Even though the bandaging was off a week ago, he still had to be kept on a lead for yet another week. For a ball and swimming obsessed boy like Oscar, he's been pretty restricted. So, imagine his joy to find himself 'off lead' again and free to race down into the river or lake for a cool down or sniff a special smell for just as long as he wanted. Heaven!
This place is just a five minute drive from our city centre home and is always a beautiful and peaceful oasis to spend an hour or two.
I couldn't not include this last photo as these little beauties never fail to brighten my day. Such simple beauty!
This week, the family arrive for the Easter weekend, which I'm really looking forward to. There might an Easter egg or two, perhaps an egg hunt and even some Easter nest cooking for the little ones. We'll have to see. It's just good to be together!
