Last quilt of 2009

I must be feeling better, as I've finished off a Linus quilt over the last couple of days. It started as a donated piece of half square triangles.

I thought they would make a nice quilt, but was wondering what colour to use as a border. What colour do you think is the most predominant in the quilt? Red? Blue? Green? Pink? In fact, it doesn't really matter what you choose, as the border often decides the colour of the quilt. A multi-coloured quilt with a red border reads as a red quilt. The same one with a yellow border picks out all the yellow in the quilt and looks yellow.

So, for this quilt I chose ......

turquoise! I made a narrow turquoise border and then a border with clowns on a turquoise background, finished with a turquoise binding!

I didn't quilt it too much, as I used that puffy polyester wadding (it had been donated) and it doesn't take too well to elaborate quilting. And on that note, I would like to wish eveyone a happy New Year and a happy, healthy and productive 2010.

Better now

I can hardly believe that it's been nearly 3 weeks since I posted. This has partly been due to Christmas and its baking, wrapping, entertaining and socialising demands, but mainly because I have been unwell. I've been suffering from what Winston Churchill referred to as 'the old black dog', and it has sapped my desire to do anything but the essentials and even meant that I have not wanted to do the things I love. Still, after a visit to my GP and some medication, I am beginning to start to pick up the threads agin (literally and metaphorically!) and also feeling that there is hope ahead.

I had to force myself to finish my Christmas Lights quilt, as it was destined for DS's bed over the festive period. There is minimal quilting, and while I'm thinking about adding more once the decorations come down on twelfth night, I expect I'm kidding myself! I think it looks good as it is, and he's delighted with it, so that's all that matters.

Challenge

Recently I have agreed to take part in a challenge with some quilters from Canada. The challenge was to make a super-duper block (suitable for the centre piece of a quilt) and then the participants were to make blocks of the same area but not the same size. So, if a block was 10" x 10" you could make four blocks 5" x 5" etc. This was a bit challenging not only from the sewing perspective, but also mathematically!

Here is one of the challenge blocks I received. It is fabulous! There is Mariner's Compass underneath, and then Celtic knotwork on top! There is no way I would ever be able to make anything as good as this. But the question was, what could I make to go with it? Lots of head-scratching later and a bit of research (that's what you call flipping through magazines, isn't it?) I decided to do curved flying geese.

And here they are! It would have been better if I'd made one set go to the left and the other to the right, but I'm sure the recipient will manage to make the best of them. They are winging their way over the Atlantic next week, so at least they're ready!