Secrets and snow

I have been busy sewing, but not anything I can share! I am making a Christmas gift for someone who reads my blog, so that will have to keep under wraps (literally!) until after Christmas. Jane and I are organising a sewing day for Rocheberie Quilters in January, and I've been making blocks for that. It's a mystery day, so that's got to stay secret too!

So the only things I've got which are worth showing are photos of the weather.

This is from my front window,

and this is from the back. Lovely to look at, but not much fun for the traveller.

Right. Back to my sewing machine!

Dresden plate (and snow)

Since I finished my Seductive Curves quilt, I've felt in the need of some sewing that doesn't need a lot of brain power. (No rude comments, please!) I decided to get some of my UFOs finished and have started with the Dresden plate top I made recently.

Since it's only 40" square, it layered up and quilted really quickly. I didn't do much quilting on the 'plates', just round the centres to hold them down and then some echo quilting round the edges to emphasise the pattern. The borders were quilted with my favourite meander with hearts, and I put a little pink heart in the centre of each pink square.

Not quite my usual style, but very suitable for the colour scheme!

I couldn't believe it when I got up this morning to find more snow! We had a few inches on Tuesday, which resulted in a 'working from home' day for me. Wednesdays I don't work, so I was up ready for work on Thursday, to find about 6" of snow had fallen overnight. All my schools were closed, and I hadn't got any more work with me, so I had a snow day! I was planning to do some food shopping etc. today, but will wait till it stops snowing at least. This is the view from my front door.

(The thing on the right hand side which looks a bit like a cow's ear, is in fact a leaf on my bay tree!) And this is the view out of my bedroom window, over next door's garden and the fields.

For Middle England, this is serious snow! If you want to look at some decent photos of the snow (definitely no cow's ears etc) then Jane has some really lovely ones on her blog. Meanwhile, since I'm warm and snug, both DD and DS are safe and well, DH has a large heavy car and lots of common sense and I don't have any travel plans till Monday, I'm enjoying the view!

Feathered star 2

Yesterday there were 'severe weather' warnings out to tell us that snow was on the way. We were supposed to have snow coming in off the North Sea (from the east) yesterday afternoon and this morning. DD and I were quite looking forward to it, as neither of us needed to travel any where, so could enjoy it. However, we didn't see even one flake! Apparently the wind turned and the snow was only on the coast and high ground. What a swizz!


Never mind. Since it was bitterly cold, I made my own snowflake (or feathered star). This one was from Quilter's Cache. The centre should have been a solid square, but I felt it looked too solid, so made it into a star instead. The instructions were fantastic, although this star was a bit more tricky to assemble (or at least, I had to do a lot of pinning and a bit of bodging) but not really difficult. The only snag is that at 21" finished, it won't fit with the other one (15" finished) so into the UFO box it goes - for now!