My turn to post

Today I packed up a quilt ready to be sent off to the other side of the world as a gift for a dear relative of my husband. When I was in NZ she was tickled by the local designs of fabric I bought and I have used some of them to make this quilt and hopefully raise a smile. I call it my Kiwi Quilt and it is my version of the Maple Island Hot shots quilt pattern, a simple but effective one for using large or novelty prints. The original pattern has 12" blocks. Mine were 10.5" based on 1.75 finished squares.

Look what the postman brought!

Last autumn I handed over a very simply pieced quilt over to be custom quilted by Mandy Parks of The Quilt's Whiskers. I know the wide open spaces presented her with something of a conumdrum and I'm very grateful to her for thinking long and hard about what she wanted to do. I wasn't much help! Anyway I heard from her last week and today as promised the quilt arrived and it is marvellous. I love it and am now wondering whether to bind it in navy or red. My husband suggests dark red.
My photos don't do it justice but I am going to enter it for Sandown and perhaps for FOQ. I'm off to Paducah shortly and will check out Festival of Quilts when I get back. The Sandown form has gone. Unfortunately I won't be at Sandown but I have long been planning to enter a quilt into this show which is very popular with us folk in the south east and I would like to thank Mandy by showing off her lovely work to lots of show visitors.

Changing the bed

At present I've got the Quay Quilt on my bed made using Mary's Triangles in shades of green, blues and purples mainly. It probably looks best hung on a large wall but it's also pleasant to sit in bed and look at the pattern, like being at sea, foamy and green. It's called the Quay Quilt because it's a resized verion of the Quay Quilters' raffle quilt some years ago.