An Autumn Walk, and Thoughts of Christmas

The temperature is dropping, so we dug out our jumpers and set off for a walk over the heathland.  It's our favourite place to go, as it's very close to home and the kids can tramp for miles.  The foliage is just starting to change colour, and I loved seeing the occasional flash of red and orange.

  

The kids had great fun climbing trees, hiding in bushes, jumping off tree trunks and generally being kids!

 

I found a tiny pine seedling, growing among the tall grasses, and the kids thought it was hilarious when I lay down in the leaf mould to photograph it.

We also found lots of squirrel picnics - practically every stump had the remains of a pine cone snack on it!

We came home to a roast dinner and it was here that my thought turned to Christmas.  I have been reading Cottons 'n Wool's blog and absolutely loving how Anne decorates her home for the holidays.  I would love to have my house full of seasonal quilts, so I grabbed a pencil and started work.  Here's the design I came up with.

 

Okay, so my drawing skills aren't up to much, but hopefully you get the picture!  I want to use some Kansas Trouble plaids that have been calling me for a long time, so I think I'll make these into half square triangles to make scrappy squares.  I can't decide which fabric to use for the border to the applique - tiny reindeer or holly leaves?

I made a matching design, based on my tiny pine seedling, but I'm going to polish up my drawings before I share this with you.  Perhaps I should invest in some software?

I'm seeing my chiropractor tomorrow, which I hope will mean I will be able to make a start on this tomorrow!  I am itching to get going...

Macmillan Coffee, and coasters

Every year Macmillan Cancer Support hosts a World's Biggest Coffee Morning to raise funds for this very worthwhile charity.  Coffee mornings are held all over the country, by individuals, businesses and organisations.  This year, a very good friend asked me to help her host one, so I jumped on board!

My house this week has felt like the set from The Great British Bake Off!  The passion, the tears, the jubilation, the desperation.  All have visited the Quilt Patch this week.  I first decided to make a Dundee cake, as that could be made a few days in advance, and I love fruit cake!  Unfortunately, my oven is a bit tricky, temperature-wise, as it's fan assisted.  I usually just drop the temperature by about 20 degrees, and all is fine.  Not this time though.  The published cooking time was 2 - 2 1/2 hours, and by 1 3/4 hours my cake was overcooked!  Not by much, but more than I would have liked.  I didn't have enough ingredients to go again, so it would have to do.

Next I made a lemon syrup cake, courtesy of Nigella.  I do love her recipes, and this came out just right.  My Easy Chocolate Cake was next up.  I have made this a few times now, and it is by far the yummiest, and easiest I've ever made.  All was going well, until I came to ice it.  I still don't know what exactly went wrong, but the chocolate and cream mixture ejected all of the fat solids.  I have never seen this before, and again, I had no spare chocolate to make more.  I had to make do with a sprinkling of icing sugar on top.

Finally I made Spiced Pumpkin Latte Cupcakes from this recipe I found on Pinterest.  I just love these!  They have just the right amount of spice, and a very subtle hint of coffee.  They look incredible too.

As this is supposed to be a patchwork blog, I did knock together a few coasters to put in the raffle.  Unfortunately this is all the sewing I've been able to do in the past couple of weeks.  Here are a few pictures.

I paticularly liked the quilting on the trees, and I even hand quilted the brown/green ones.  Unfortunately I forgot to photograph the finished article!

The good news is that our coffee morning raised £500 for Macmillan, so we were absolutely thrilled with that!

Small Steps

My main purchases at the Quilt Festival were Christmas fabrics.  I am having a stall at my son's Chritmas bazaar, so need to get going on some seasonal goodies.  However,  developing a slipped disc in my neck was not part of my game plan, and has hampered my sewing just a little!

Here are a couple of the fabrics I bought.  I thought they were a bit unusual.

 

This back and silver fabric looks stunning in real life, and I have plans to make a table runner and place mats with this.  It's from the Enjoy Christmas range by Stof fabric, and feels lovely and silky.

 

This is actually from the same range and I saw these made into bunting.  I liked them so much I also bought it in a taupe colourway.  It doesn't sound very Christmasy, but I think they came out ok.

 I managed to get these made up just before my neck went, so I now can't wait to get working on these great fabrics again!

Getting Back to Normality

Well, it's been a while!  What with our summer holiday followed by the school holidays and a few health issues my quilting had taken a very decided back seat over the last few months.  However, the kids are back at school, my neck is healing and the weather is distinctly autumnal - all of which mean I need to quilt!

 Whilst my quilting has been minimal, I have been doing lots of looking, does that count?  I went to the International Quilt Festival in Birmingham in August, and spent a blissful couple of days filling up with inspiration.  And my goodness, some of the pieces were completely mindblowing!  I have a few pictures of my favourites, but unfortunately I can't find my show guide to give you the maker.  If you recognise any please let me know.

 I love how the solid colours pop against the black.  I can see me doing some more with solids in the near future.

I was particularly taken by this one, as I had visited the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao two weeks before this, and seen the original David Hockney painting that this was based on.  They were both absolutely splendid!

 I'm not usually drawn to art quilts, but I did love this.  So simple, yet evocative.

I apologise for the poor quality of the photo, but this whole cloth quilt was about 10 inches square.  Yes, inches!  The tiny quilting was incredible.

 Another miniature quilt - look at those tiny triangles.

 Can you spot a theme here?  It is always the miniatures that really capture my interest.  I love Mariner's Compass, but I just cannot imagine ever being talented enough to produce one in this sort of size.

 

Last miniature, I promise.  I just had to show this one with a finger, to give an indication of the scale.  Those flying geese - amazing!

 I love the use of tone in this quilt, and the whole thing shone across the hall.  So beautiful.

 This is another that reminded me of happy holidays, this time in Portugal.  They are grain stores, and this quilt was hard to distinguish from a photograph.


My friend and I have made a pact to enter a quilt hopefully in next years festival.  Watch this space!