Brick Wall

This picture here represents another huge tick against my list of 'stuff outstanding from last year'.

(There's only one more thing to go - phew.)

It's my 'Strips of Bricks', as Inspired by a quilt by Red Pepper Quilts that I stumbled across on Pinterest.  I pulled a quite mixed bag of fabrics off the shelves to make this one.  Some lovely ditsy prints, some bold colours, some more modern prints and even - hold on to your hats - some black!  I love and adore how this mish mash works together though.   Somehow, even though it's a bit of a fabric free for all, it really really works wonders for me.

This was quite a nice was a quilt to put together.  No having to worry about lining up seams or pressing to the right side.  The only thing was to make sure that the spread of fabrics was ok.  Nothing the same too close to each other.  So making the top was a lovely task.  The bit I always dread is the quilting.  The worry over basting the layers together well enough to avoid wrinkles and worst of all the tedium and physical workout that is quilting on a home machine.

To be completely honest my normal quilting style is 'bare minimum' and my normal approach is to grit my teeth and plough through quickly to get the job over with.  This quilt started in the same way, but at some point during the process a change took place.  

I was probably about half-way through when it suddenly dawned on me that this wasn't actually horrendous this time.  I don't know what was different, a slightly better desk set up, a better arrangement of the quilt for feeding through the machine maybe, I'm not sure.  Whatever it was, I started to un-grit the teeth, un-tense the muscles a little and relax a bit.  I actually started to take pleasure from creating little thread lined ditches along my quilt.

In the end I decided to add more lines of quilting than the absolute minimum that I had planned.  I haven't gone crazy or anything, it's still an incredibly simple pattern.  But it could be a step down the road to maybe enjoying the quilting part one day?  Is such a thing even possible?  For now though, I'm content enough with the idea that I won't be dreading the meer thought of it next time.

I'll leave you with some more quilt pictures in a minute, but I just wanted to show you a couple of snippets from the weekend first.  Was it a glorious sunny one where you were too?  Spring was most certainly in the air around here and I slogged my little guts out in the garden.  Mowing, weeding, trimming and sometimes hacking back.  I was rather exhausted by the end but it was a joy to be out there.  Little Miss loved to be able to play outside and get out garden toys out again and I even found a few minutes for a quick crochet play over a coffee.  Bliss. 

There's also the small matter of a big pile of yarn and buttons to mention.  Quite the haul eh?  My Nan has decided, in her infinite wisdom, that she is no longer going to be knitting anything and has bestowed on me her remaining yarn stash and a whole heap of buttons.  Thanks Nan!  I'm a little wary at the moment, truth be told, in case she changes her mind and wants it all back.  But I'm happy to be it's custodian during the cooling off period!

S x

♥

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