A floral quilt with some help from some cross stitch

These six cross stich flowers, done on a nice fine embroidery linen, have been sitting in my bottom drawer for 3 or 4 years.  I wanted to put them in a quilt but thought the blocks could easily just look like white blobs dumped down on a  quilt.  But when I saw Back Home Again by Wilmington Prints, with its soft rural scenes I started to get enthusiastic, with the following result.

Also included are three fabrics from Luna Notte from Moda and other bits and pieces I already had.

Recently I had seen an image of this square and diamond layout- I think it was a free pattern in one of the newsletters I subscribe to.  But now I can't find it and so can't give my thanks.  The sample was done in  more contrasty fabrics and looked quite different.

I have really enjoyed putting this quilt together.  They really are what I consider "my colours" - nice and soft.  But I have had a hard time as I have been reading  David Nicholls' "One Day", so at times it has been a real struggle trying to decide which one I wanted to do most !  But mostly the quilt won out !

Two Stack n Slash quilts

Noelene from our Friday group made a Stack n Slash quilt last week. This time her pieces of fabric were smaller than fat quarters so she used more than one stack to get a suitable size quilt.

But when I saw this it reminded me that I had done a similar quilt with fat quarters earlier in the year but the quilting was not quite finished and it needed binding.   So that kept me occupied for part of the weekend and now I have one less UFO. A good feeling.

Fifties Dress No 3

No 3 dress for Dress Me Up wasn't quite as time consuming as the first two.  I think it's really sweet.

But if you look carefully half way up the left hand side you can see  that a small pleat has formed in the fabric - as I started to iron it the backing shifted - an iron-on adhesive kind of gauze which re-inforces the front fabric and  helps prevent puckering.  The more I tried to get the pleat out the worse I made it, so now I need to do some thinking !.

Not being a good week, actually.  This morning I made another block for the Farmer's wife quilt and went to give it a press before trimming the edges,  Only then did I notice  that one of the fabrics was sewn in with its wrong side facing.  It's so noticeable - how could I not notice it when I was sewing. Now for some retrograde stitching - the polite way of saying unpicking.

But one person who does things right is Pam from the Friday Group who has finished her lovely log cabin quilt.  I really like this one, particularly the sprays of flowers at the centre of each log cabin.

But it's raining.  And I'd love to go out for a latte !  Why can't we have a coffee truck which trawls the streets with some approriate bells or music blaring so that I could just rush out and get my desire !