Slow Sunday Stitching

Today has been a lovely Sunday. After a slightly wet family walk yesterday, I've had a great day out with the kids and my mum and dad today: feeding the ducks, eating lunch outside and running round the playground for a couple of hours. Lovely. A real last gasp of summer

This week I've been trying my hand at hand quilting and I've finished of the 10" panel below. I love the vibrant yellow on this print, a real summery colour. It's been sitting in my stash for over a year, but leapt out at me when I was looking for a print to try some hand work on.

This is only my second go at hand quilting (and my first go was big stitches only), so this was a bit of a challenge. I chose to quilt with white thread along the white lines in the flowers, hoping to end up with something usable, even if the quilting went a little wonky. The stitches were pretty uneven to start with,...

But they improved as I went on, and by the end I was pretty pleased with them. I'm keen to see what will happen to the texture after a wash, when the fabrics softened up a bit.

I'm figuring this will be a nice little cushion with the addition of a border (especially as the back looks a bit of a mess)

I've loved the slow stitching in front of the telly during the week, and I can definitely see myself doing a bit more as the evening start to draw in. In fact, I'm tempted to cut up the rest of the fabric and start another panel right now. I do think it would look great on the front of a tote bag.

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at  freshly pieced and  Kathy at

Winter Geese Cushion - a finish

Schools back, and life is busier than ever, despite the fact my youngest is a preschool now and I have a morning in on my own a week. I have, however, kept sewing in the small bits of time between the usual rushing around and have a finish to share.

Here are a few pictures: -

the front: a paper pieced circle of geese patter from Jeli quilts

the back: my first log cabin.

My second ever go at a zip was much more successful than my first!

It's my first bit if FMQ for ages - really I wanted a tiny scale meander over the background fabric to make the geese pop, but it was way beyond my skill level. If I do the pattern again, I might try echo quilting to emphasize the direction the geese are flying instead. I think it would be a much stronger design

All in all, a happy finish. Not a perfect execution of what I had in mind, but with each finish there's an improvement from the last. Now, who shall I gift to to?

Linking up to finish it up fridays at Crazy Mom Quilts