November round-up

Cushions get a hard time around here. They are a constant prop for all the kids' play. Always used differently and creatively, depending on the child and the day.

(Actually the adults use them a lot, too, but in different ways!)

It makes my heart sing to see them being used so much. But of course, all that play means they get worn, and faded and stained. None of them are ready to replace yet, but it does mean I have a good reason for keeping on making them!

So I'm very pleased to have (finally) finished my big Boxer floor cushion. 

In my last post, I was partway through the quilting —

I used the Hourglass blocks as a basis for the background quilting. I did consider continuing on with the narrow line fill in the triangles of the background but decided I didn't really need all that extra work! —

You can see (above) that I just did a few straight lines around the outer border. (I used quilters muslin for the backing so the quilting shows up well!)

Being a cushion, it then needed another back.....so far I had used only leftovers and stash, so I rummaged through my non-quilting cupboard and found some pieces suitable to use —

The grey is a reasonable sized remnant from making shorts for my son YEARS ago ( I loved those shorts, that fabric wore sooo well!), the blue is cut off from curtains which I doubled for extra weight. The red is leftovers from making absolutely heaps of boy scout scarves for a jamboree many moons ago.
And the zip, I think, is one Mum unpicked from a pair of Dad's farm overalls. It's been waiting a while for its chance to shine again!

Tada, one finished cushion (cover)! 

More details of the cushion make are *here* but it did start life as a fun and fabulous test block for Juliet of Tartankiwi and was added onto during the Time In A Bottle bloghop run by Carol of Just Let Me Quilt.

Because of its size (32" square) it's waiting for its inner - I have that under control; I took advantage of a Black Friday sale and just need to collect it.

I'm linking up to Andree's Free Motion Mavericks - visit *here*.

My block count for November was fairly abysmal; I made a total of 12 blocks - two of them were stitchery blocks, five more hourglass blocks for my Smidgeon project. And five more Churn dash blocks.

The idea was that our Churn dash quilts/projects would be completed by the end of October. Hmm - a bit of a miss there for me, but I keep chipping away. Of course it doesn't help that I chose a pattern that creates a HUGE quilt!

The block below measures 24"!

I had to do a bit of 'making-do' to make my scraps work. I think in the long run it will be barely noticeable —

I have assembled one corner of it —

It's a fun quilt to make, keeping me on my toes. I'm trying to not repeat fabrics but have the odd double-up. The pattern is Barn Dance by Denise Russart.

In other news, I have got some new babies to look after —

14 of them! I haven't had any new ones to raise for a long time as the pet shop had trouble getting them in. The last babies I raised are in their second year of laying now. Four of these ones will go to my daughter-in-law's. 

These photos were taken when they were about 3 days old - they've now outgrown the cat cage and are in a box.

One last photo. The Tui have been singing away lately and I managed to get a photo of one that wasn't nestled amongst the branches. Not the best photo light-wise but it shows the tufts at the neck really well.

Ok time to be off, 

'til next time,

happy stitches,