Lottie's quilt inspiration

Home made baby blanket

brickwork pattern

Another blog post where I have start apologising for being so slack with my updates. There's really not been a lot to report on recently unless you want to hear about boring plumbing or electrical stuff. Yawn. We are about to order a kitchen so watch this space, its all going to take off any minute....Any minute now...promise.

As you've probably guessed, I'm about to go off topic slightly by showing you what I have been working on. Quilting is now my new craft passion I stumbled upon accidentally when trying to think what I could make for my best pal's baby. My brief to myself was that it needed to suit either sex, be personal and not too challenging. By challenging, I don't just mean in terms of skills required, although that too was a consideration, but also due to our recent loss, it couldn't be something that would push me too much emotionally. I had my moments but overall I quite impressed myself by focusing on celebrating a new life and not just thinking of our own tragedy and what could've (should've) been.

Making Lottie's quilt was not altogether straight forward. For a kick off, I started too late and even though Lottie gave me a few extra day's grace, I was still well behind resulting in the scaling down of ambitions. I 'cheated' by going for a brick pattern as this saved having to have all the squares of equal size and trying to painstakingly line them all up. Also the applique is machine done. I'd recommend taking the time to hand stitch this. The bit I was dreading the most was actually the easiest -the binding (Pimps as they say up here). I think I may have just got lucky. Anyway although the baby quilt is clearly miles away from house renovating it does still tie in as I think I may make a quilt or two out of retro fabrics for the house. This would please me. Now all I need to do is to find the time (and the right fabric). What do you think?