Halloween hangings

Not really as bloodthirsty as the title sounds! I've just finished these two little Halloween hangings, one each for my two sons. 

Unfortunately, I can't find the pattern nor remember who designed this pattern, so I'm unable to thank them for this fun little project.

PS Thank you Lynn for letting me know that this pattern came from Feeling Stitchy.

Log cabin top finished

Just a quick update, so that I can add this to the Scrap Happy Rainbow Challenge round-up. I've finished up all of my black scraps now, and this is the result. It's the first log cabin quilt top I've made and I'm really pleased with the result. It will make a very masculine donation lap quilt.

Group Quilt

As part of the 2012 Olympics there are several 'cultural' offshoots. One of these is A Gift of Quilts, the plan being for a quilt to be donated to each of the countries taking part in the Olympics and the Paralympics. I first heard of this last year and suggested that our local WI (Women's Institute) group might like to take part. The idea was taken up with enthusiasm and in January we got together for the first time to plan our quilt.

Few of the keen bunch who met in my house that first time had any experience of quilting, and some had no experience of sewing at all. But they were all very enthusiastic. Having decided on a theme everyone went away to design and then make a block. As the meetings went on we eventually ended up with 25 blocks. My job was then to complete the quilt top and try to tie all the different blocks together.

Once the quilt top was finished, layered and basted it went the rounds of the participants for quilting, coming back to me a couple of weeks ago for some extra quilting, binding and labelling. I'm still waiting for the signature blocks so that I can complete it and send it off and then we'll have to wait until early next year to find out which country our quilt will be donated to.

It's been a fun exercise and when I took the quilt to our meeting last week the ladies were over the moon with the way it had turned out.

It's not perfect, but I hope that it will be appreciated by the Olympic Committee and athletes of whichever country receives it.

A change of look

We've recently had the outside of the house painted, along with a load of work on the roof. We've kept the cream colour on the new part of the house and the inner courtyard, and kept with the stone on the garages and the back of the house. But we've changed from the dark brown woodwork to something more bright and cheerful. The neighbours are definitely divided about whether they like this or not. What do you think?

This view is taken looking over the inner courtyard

This is another view of the inner courtyard, with the lounge and main bedroom windows on the right and the kitchen and one of the smaller bedroom windows on the left.

This is the front of the house. The new part of the house is weird in having very small windows at the front. We're not too sure why they decided to do that, but it does make it very annoying sometimes as you can't see if a car is arriving.

Black

September's colour for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is black, and as I have a lot of strips rather than larger pieces I've been cutting them all down to one and a half inches to make log cabin blocks. I'll make it lap quilt size to add to the donation pile.

I hope you're not going to get sick of these!

We visited the puppies again this morning, so here's a couple more photographs.

An addition to the family

Well, we've taken the plunge! We've been talking about it for the two and a half years since we moved to Somerset and have finally decided that the time is right to get a dog. We decided to get a puppy from a breeder rather than a rescue dog since this will be our first time and we want the fun of a puppy, and no baggage from previous unhappy experiences.

Of course, once we'd decided, there wasn't a puppy to be found, but suddenly a friend of a friend had a litter of puppies and we went to look at them on Monday.

It's a litter of cocker spaniels, one dog and four bitches. They weren't asleep the whole time we were there, but when they were awake we were holding one or another of them, so these are the only chances I had to take photographs.

And this is the one we've chosen. They were only four weeks old, so we'll have to be patient for another four weeks. We haven't decided on a name for her yet. We'll be visiting again several times in the next few weeks, so will get a chance to take some more photographs and for her to start to get to know us.

It's beginning to sink in now!

Fabric chosen

I've now dug out a pile of fabrics to use for the Dead Simple Quiltalong. But I might end up doing my own thing if the quilt design turns out to be too simple. I have a quilt pattern in mind that I really like, so I'll wait and see how the fancy takes me.

These are the fabrics that I've chosen to go with the colour palette that I showed yesterday.

This is the quilt pattern. I love the use of colour and plan to make it one day, even if I don't use it this time.

Dead Simple Quiltalong

Lynne, at Lily's Quilts is having a Dead Simple Quiltalong, where the emphasis is to be on colour choice rather than complicated patchwork and quilting. I really didn't intent to get involved in this one, since I've got quite enough to be going on with. But then I got the joining requirements for a Machine Embroidery course I'm taking, and found that I need to choose a colour palette so that I can die my fabrics in advance.

Then I got to thinking; a small quilt in the same colours as my machine embroidery piece could look quite good together. And I want to decorate the dining room next year. And I know the sort of colours I want. So it all comes together.

This is the colour palette I've chosen, which happened to be on Lily's Quilts blog this morning, though it's very similar to ones I've been looking at on Design Seeds.

Design Seeds is a brilliant site; I might have put three of these colours together, but this adds so much more and gives me options for dark, medium and lights. Now all I've got to do is to hope that I can mix the dyes to give me these colours.