New Year’s Eve has never held any great excitement for me, I love Christmas, but over the years I often volunteered to work New Years Eve as I really wasn’t enthralled with the idea of going out. My OH and I now have a nice routine of a special meal at home and an evening together, if we’re lucky we might still be awake at midnight! This year we watched Les Miserables, which meant I could do a bit of sewing too…

I’ve a few projects I want to get on top of before the next Sarah Fielke BOM starts on 31st January, my Etui box needs finishing, I’ve two blocks to do for my Spring Wreath quilt, and I want to do a few more Splendid Sampler blocks. Top of my list however was some quilt blocks for Kate Chiconi. Kate is making a beautiful quilt to be sold to raise money for an Ovarian Cancer charity. It’s a rather special quilt as it is in memory of a particular lady so the design includes her favourite things. It’s to be made on a very tight deadline so Kate asked the blogging community to help…

I’m making a cornerstone with a scallop shell and a couple of background blocks. I decided on New Year’s Eve to tackle the scallop shell. Kate suggested applique which sounded the best way forward. I searched on Pinterest for some ideas, but in the end I drew a shell by hand and made a basic wedge pattern. I cut seven wedges out from a pretty batik in greens, blues and teals. It would have been nice to have them all from the same stretch of pattern but the remnant I had left was long and thin the wrong way, so I managed to cut them from two areas.

Having stitched the wedges together I trimmed them to a scallop shape and added the two ‘wings’ on the bottom. I realised that at the centre, not only was it bulky, there was also a bit of a gap! I cut a short wedge to applique over the top. It works really well as it meant I could reduce the bulk in the middle and it enhances the design. All I had to do then was to applique the shell to a batik background.

I’d also volunteered to make a couple of background blocks, the central ones were to be in the palest, muted shades of teal, blue and cream, the border blocks were in brighter, jewel like tones. I decided on a simple nine square bock for both blocks. The border one was fairly easy to choose fabrics for, I used the same stripy batik as the shell for a bit of continuity, together with a gorgeous spotty batik. The centre block was more tricky, just because how pale is pale! In the end I fussy cut from another batik, picking out the most muted areas. If it doesn’t look right it can always go behind the central design 🙂

These will be winging their way to Australia at the weekend, I’m looking forward to seeing this quilt come together as I think it’s going to be pretty special.