Bit of a theme

Having had all the pieces for a Linus patchwork top donated was great, but then I needed to find borders. I was lucky to find some pink in my stash, and then went with Pauline on a fabric-buying expedition (she was supposed to be buying, not me!) and found a lovely turquoise spot which was perfect for the border.

Here is the finished quilt, which will very shortly be on its way to a 14 year old girl with cancer.

The turquoise spot turned out to be very handy, as I found it was the ideal match for some Michael Miller fabric I was planning to make a bag with.

This bag is my original design - by which I mean that all the components are taken from various other bags, resized and reorganised. After all, a bag's a bag! I'm particularly pleased with this one, as I've finally mastered a zipped pocket inside it!

Here you can see the zipped pocket in the lining, and an ordinary set of flap pockets. The bag is for a workshop after Christmas, and I hope people like it enough to want to make it!

A present

A friend of mine, decided that she wanted to learn about patchwork. Naturally, I offered to show her the basics, and we spent a lovely day constructing star blocks and making them up into a bag. (I thought that if when she starts piecing, she decides it's not for her, at least she'll have a bag to show for it, rather than a few oddd blocks!). Not surprisingly, she's hooked, and is now planning a sampler quilt, to get some techniques under her belt!

Which is why I was mystified when she came with a large squishy present for me. She had been busy sewing, but not her sampler blocks.

She had made me a beautiful bag as a thank you for the help I'd given her! She had chosen pink and green fabric (some of the green with writing on it - my all-time favourite kind of fabric!) She's already branching out, as she has added a diamond to the centre of one of the stars,

and on the other side, a scrappy heart block and a block of her own invention! (She said it went wrong, but I know the truth - she made it up specially for me!) Thank you so much, Pauline. I'll be looking forward to many happy hours of quilting together!