Finished - playmat quilt

I loved making this little playmat quilt. It is for my nephew and his partners first baby. I started making it about a month before the baby was due, but she surprised us all and came three weeks early!

What I like best about making these quilts is that they are small - so it allows me to try out different techniques. I have made a couple of other ones for my niece's children, see here and here

I knew the parents had decorated the nursery in lemon, so wanted something to tone in with that, and also that they liked the small pattern fabric I had used to make a cushion for them as a christmas gift.

I was flicking through a book by Kathy Doughty and Sarah Fielke 'Material Obsession', and liked a quilt Sarah had made called 'Corner Shop'. I adapted this pattern making all the blocks smaller, so my finished play mat would be 36" square. I tried out the block full size at first and then adjusted my blocks to make them smaller.

I had bought a moda charm pack at the festival of quilts last year, and thought that would work well and once I had sorted out the quilt design I also bought a layer cake of the same design so I would have lots of choice of the different colours and patterns.

So the centre became 16 blocks each measuring 5 inches square

Once stitched together, I made the inner boarder in lemon, and then added two rows of smaller 3 inch squares around the edge.

Clara came up to my workroom see what I was doing so late into the evening, and took a few photos of me working away. I thought I would add an action photo here, this is where I am just finishing the last strip to finish the quilt top …..

Next day I layered up the quilt ready for some simple machine quilting. I used a slightly thicker wadding than I would for a cot quilt, as this design is for a playmat. I quilted diagonally on the centre - just 'stitch in the ditch', then around the boarder on both edges…..

….. and just a straight line between the smaller blocks along the lengths. Then made some matching bias binding for the edge.

I really love this fabric, and was really pleased with the way it all came together. I had also tried a couple of new techniques that I'd not used before - setting the squares en-point, and adding triangles to the edges of the squares - is this called broken dishes?? so that was all new for me. My original plan was to embroider a little something in each of the white centre blocks, but in the end I thought it would look too fussy so left them plain.

Then the grand ta dah!! Clara obliged and held the quilt up for me!

We went to visit the new baby last week, and took the gift with us…. so here is the new baby girl, sleeping peacefully on her playmat!

Spring on the farm.

We are so lucky where we live at the moment, and I will dearly miss this area when we move later in the year. We live on a working farm in a little cottage. We are not farmers, but we get to see the farming year at first hand, and I love this time of year when the young animals are born. A couple of days ago, we had a new foal born in the field behind our house…. just soooo cute!

Also we have lots of new lambs all around us.  Just look at the little triplets below, born on my friends farm just down the lane. 

 

I love to go and help bottle feed the orphans, and see how they grow. 

On a recent dog walk, Clara and I came across a muddy puddle full of frogspawn. 

We went back a couple of days later on another walk, and there were lots of tadpoles. We are hoping that the tadpoles grow up quickly before the puddle dries up!

The lanes are full of lovely spring flowers and the hedges and trees are beginning to bud and the leaves are coming out!

I love this time of year….. time to bring out my 'Spring' quilt again.

Thanks for dropping by.

Craft, the seaside and the house renovation project….

Firstly, this blog at the moment seems like a monthly catch up of what I have been doing - and to some extent it is. My blog is a reminder to me about things that I have done and places I have been, and its lovely that so many people pop by to see what I have been up to. Over the last few months a lot of my time has been taken up with the house renovation project, which has meant that I have not had so much time for other things, but once we have moved (in a few months time) hopefully things will get back to a more even keel.

The playmat I have been making for my nephew and his partner for their new baby, became a rush job, as their little girl was born three weeks early!! I have seen lovely photos of the baby, and we will go and visit over the Easter holidays.

Once the centre blocks were made and a border added, I had to cut 80 smaller squares for the outside border! More about this quilt will be in another post and the grand ta-dah!

During the last month J and I also went to look after his mum for a while, whilst his sister and her husband were on holiday. They live close to the sea near Seaham on the NE coast of England, so each evening I was able to take Beanie for a walk along the beach. 

me and my dog!

Seaham, amongst other things, is famous for its glass making history. In 1853 the Cavendish Bottleworks and glass foundry was built on the cliffs at Seaham. It made all sorts of coloured glass for vases, homeware, medicine and poison bottles! as well as everyday drinks and milk bottles. At the end of each day any excess molten glass and any broken glass was thrown over the cliffs into the sea. 

The glass in the sea was then tumbled and smoothed by the waves, creating smooth frosted pebbles of glass which wash up on the coast. The Bottleworks closed in 1921 and was later demolished in the 1950's - so any glass found has quite a history.

It can get very addictive, walking along the beach looking at the sand and picking up small pieces of glass! Poor Beanie, I think he got a little bored as I wasn't really giving him much attention. Above is my little haul of glass pebbles and some interesting stones! below are the most interesting glass pebbles made from blue and green glass…...

……. especially the multi coloured piece with the different shades of green!

My niece bought her children around to see us while we were there. I made some cakes and had a little helper to decorate the cakes for us. Mmmmm, yummy!

The house project is going well! The windows and doors are on order, and now building work is moving from the new extension to the old part of the house. I'm trying to finalise our ideas on some of the interior fittings - so many decisions to make!!!!

Hope you had a lovely Easter break