I’ve stitched another two blocks from the Love & Hugs SAL on facebook, there’s a 6″ block being released every day, so I’m just printing off the patterns and stitching when I can. I’ve discovered there will be sixteen patterns all together, I’m not planning at the moment to make all of them, but we will see.

I’m using colours which will go with my Coming Home Quilt, the idea being that I can use all my leftover fabric (of which I seem to have quite a lot, I’ve only one border left to do!!) to make a scrap quilt. One idea I have at the moment is to make a number of 6″ pieced house blocks, these could then alternate with the embroidered blocks to make a reasonable sized throw with some sashing and borders. Hence the potential name of Staying Home quilt, I thought it was rather apt!

Anyway, back to the stitching…

The next one to be stitched was one by Gail Pan, I’ve admired her designs for a while, in fact I have one of her books on my shelf, waiting for me to stitch something. It’s a very pretty design with bees and flowers. The beehive and the box are done in chain stitch, the rest is just back-stitch, lazy daisy’s and straight stitches, oh and a bit of satin stitch too. I changed the colours as I was going as the box seemed too dominant at first – not that it was going to get unpicked!! I changed the colour of the running stitch to a mid shade, rather than a light one, which helped to tone down the dark blue a bit.

The background fabric is actually a warm white with a delicate grey tracery of leaves and stems, it looks lovely but it’s a so and so to trace over, as I couldn’t tell what was fabric and what was design lines, even with a homemade light box!

The second block is by Jenelle Kent of Pieces to Treasure, it’s a lovely elegant block with twining leaves and a dragonfly. I enjoyed stitching this one, it’s mainly back-stitch and french knots…

I’ve already traced off the next one, I’ll probably end up stitching about twelve of these designs, then with house blocks I could have a good sized quilt. This is the four of them together…