More blocks and Clematis

I've made another 25 broken dishes blocks in the lovely soft pinks with a few greys. I need 5 for each 18" block so hopefully that is now enough, although I may need a few dark ones as I am following Izi's suggestion to put the darker ones as cornerstones and the darkest around the edge to hold the design together.

I have been out in the garden as it isn't raining yet today and have planted the tomato plants in the greenhouse into my Dad's pots - large terracotta that he knocked the bottom out of and I inherited.I vaguely remember him calling it Ring Culture; he was an organic gardener before it caught on! Every year he'd fill my car with flowers he'd grown. Now I have to grow my own...
I've taken some of the flowers, verbascum, gazania, nicotiana,and some annuals I've grown from seeds round to the front of the house but it's still a bit cold out there so I'm in for coffee.

The Clematis growing over the shed is really lovely at the moment and as I'm using flowers as my theme for my next journal quilts and the next set of postcards I'll need to look closely at flowers! I'm planning to add to my bleached fabric with some overprinting later today.

Fabric Crumbs.

I've made some postcards for this month's swap, which is "Fabric Crumbs" I had collected all the threads that unravelled from the recent dyeing session and chopped them up and stuck them to a strip of "steam a seam" glue. I cleaned the iron because the backing paper was sticky... then stuck them down to a piece of screen printed furnishing fabric courtesy of   Helen Howes discard box. I free machine quilted them with a variegated rayon thread with black polyester scarf over the top which was then cut away. Some more lines of stitch to hold the fronts to the pelmet vilene inners then added the hand dyed cotton backs and stitched the edges this time with a cotton variegated thread.

I finished the backs with information printed onto sticky labels as I would find it a struggle to hand write them all. All ready to post when I get back from my trip away later this week.

 Today I planted out the peas, and have cleared out and replanted several of the pots holding the netting round the pond. The King Cups have been wonderful this year, they're such a vibrant colour, but just beginning to think about dropping their petals and setting seed so I'll have to chop them back.




These are the blocks I've been working on:

Broken Dishes - the other wedding quilt I volunteered myself for, but I am really enjoying making both of them. This one is softer colours and subtle, almost Japanese looking,but the block seems quite suitable for the purpose!!

I have loads of Winding Ways blocks laid out in my block keeper book ready to take with me on Wednesday to Quilt group and to Barn Owls meeting on Friday.

The pictures!

The dark Pineapple quilt:


I am now wondering if the centres might be a bit bright and need toning down a bit perhaps by tea staining?
I am very pleased with how this has come together and it will have a wide medium blue border, and then go off to be quilted.

Many of the fabrics in here, which are left-overs from other projects are now going into my Farmer's Wife blocks.

The Wonky Log Cabin blocks:

 The Baby quilt with double pinwheel blocks made from Jellyroll strips for my nephew Carl and Agnieska.

The Farmer's Wife blocks:

Noon and Light and Fruit Basket

   Broken Dishes and Peace and Plenty 
   which both use 16 half-square   triangles.





which both were made from the templates Gilly sent


Chequerboard and  Storm Signal which were made from the Fiddler's Jig templates on Marcia Hohn's site here as the square-on-point is a strange size
and below is Whirlwind which is straightforward to make.