What's Your Flower?

So, to the snowdrops...if you guessed it was something to do with the Crazy Quilt Journal Project, you were right!

It started when I came across this in one of our homeschool books:



(Shakespeare for Kids)

Aha! I thought, I can use this list to give me a starting point for each of my crazy quilt journal blocks! And yay! The first month is snowdrop, one of my favourite flowers. So, I started gathering pictures from Flickr for inspiration, and this helped me to pull together this little bundle of scraps to work with for my first block:



The colours are much nicer in real life, but sadly the light in a British November does not do it justice :-(.

So, I'm thinking I will use each of the flowers as a starting point for each block, to help inform colour themes and embellishment ideas for each month. I may use actual pictoral representations of some of the flowers, but mainly it will be just to give me a starting place for choosing the colours. And as all the flowers will have at least some green for the foliage, this will give a commonality running through all the blocks.

Having had a gander about the interwebs at different lists of birth flowers, there is some variation in what are the "official" birth flowers, so I have chosen my favourites from a variety of sources and these are the ones I will choose:

January - Snowdrop
February - Violet
March - Daffodil
April - Daisy
May - Hawthorn
June - Rose
July - Delphinium
August - Poppy
September - Forget-me-not
October - Calendula
November - Chrysanthemum
December - Holly

I think this will give a nice mix of different colours and variations.

So, if you are doing the CQJP2012, what will you be doing for each of your different month's blocks?. I would love to hear other's ideas :-)

Books, Books, Glorious Books!

This weekend I went to the Autumn Quilt Festival. I was remarkably restrained when it came to buying fabric and threads...but then I hit the bookstands:

For some mixed media inspiration:



For some art quiltiness:



And for some liberated loveliness:



And I'm feeling newly inspired and raring to go!

Meanwhile, I have been beavering away at Fenced In, trying to get the quilting finished by the end of November. I have done most of the houses and trees now, but then there is the perimeter fence to do. Here's a few little tasters:



The more I work on this quilt, the more I love it!

Dotty over the Hexalong

If you don't already know, there's a Hexalong going on over at Lily's Quilts. Why don't you join in the fun?!

I am planning to continue with my hexagon charm quilt. Progress as of today here:



But I have also been falling in love with BIG hexies made up of smaller parts, in particular 60 degree diamond star hexies. I have put together a bit of an inspiration gallery over on Flickr:

Hexalong Inspirations, a gallery on Flickr.

I think (don't hold me to this!) I want to do something like summerfete's Summer of Love quilt, which you can see on her blog here. And because I'm feeling a bit dotty, I thought I would make all the stars with dotty and spotty fabrics. I'm not sure how I managed to inadvertently collect so many spotty fabrics but I pulled together all these from my stash:



Cos of using the incompetech graph paper (thanks for the tip Lilys Quilts) if I decide the dotty stars are just toooooo much I can make some big plain coloured hexies to go in between them. I am thinking maybe light grey for those, I am just too grubby for white lol.

Oooh, the excitement!!

And because my ICADs reflect what I am reading about, or doing, or thinking about, you won't be surprised to see my card for today:

I *heart* 3 Creative Studios

As if joining in a challenge with a group of talented and creative people wasn't enough reason to make a journal quilt each month for the 3CS challenge, each entrant is also entered into a prize draw. And guess what? I won in February!!!!!!!!!!!! The prize was a pack of Vicki's wonderful hand dyed fat quarters. Choosing which ones to have was an agonising decision (check out her etsy shop if you don't believe me!) but I eventually went with "campfire" and am very pleased I did. The fabric is simply gorgeous - I'm afraid my picture doesn't do it justice.



Another reason I'm glad I found the 3CS website, is that I found out about Terri Stegmiller, whose blog is here. And via that, about the 12 by 12 group; and from there about the Twelve by Twelve book, which I received yesterday. I haven't had much chance to look at it, but what I have seen is amazing! As well as all the beautiful inspiring pictures of the quilts, each of the 12 quilt artists talks through how they arrived at a quilt on each theme. A book to treasure!

Quilt Inspiration at Ely Cathedral

This week, the boys and I have been on a day trip to Ely Cathedral.  Can you guess what I was thinking when I saw this wonderful floor in the cathedral?:

[caption id="attachment_84" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="A quilt in the making?"][/caption]

I'm not sure my triangle piecing skill are up to scratch just yet (!) but will certainly file the image away for future reference.

Obsessed, me?!