New Year New Project

This is what I have achieved today as we are away on holiday and it is raining. 

And the second block is prepared ready for hand stitching.

This is the start of a new project – oh dear should I be doing that with all that hand 

quilting backing up. But yes I should – this is a special quilt. I have a nephew getting 

married in May and his lovely partner Kate has asked if I would make them a quilt. 

So I showed her a big range of books  representing as many quilt styles and colours 

as I could muster. She poured through them putting a post-it sticker on each page 

that had a quilt that she liked on it and we worked from there. You can imagine how

excited I was when she chose an appliqué quilt and she wanted it made

in the taupe fabrics.

So here is block one – Mushroom Gathering  - 10” square. I have used my favourite 

Freezer Paper appliqué technique. Each block has a little bit of embroidery 

on it – in true Yoko Saito style.

It is taken from Yoko Siato’s book “138 Original Applique Designs”. As the name 

suggests this book is packed with appliqué blocks so we have chosen 18 of them to make 

up the quilt. The block sizes range from 10” squares to 20” squares and some 20” by 10” rectangles. They are placed in a slightly irregular layout taken from another of my Japanese Taupe books – this one by Hitomi Hanaoka.

So onward with these blocks as they are getting married in March! The hand quilting of the other projects will just have to wait – so much for that rule I made a month ago – whoops I didn’t even bring any hand quilting projects away with me!  But I will re-instate that rule when I get home.