I’m making good progress on my Staying Home quilt, it’s basically going to be made from the left over fabric from my Coming Home quilt, I seem to have rather a lot left!

The basis of the quilt are some pretty little designs from quilters in Australia, it’s been organised by Natalie Bird of The Bird House, to help everyone through the lockdown and general uncertainty of the pandemic. She got her friends in the quilting community to each design one 6″ block, it’s all free, there’s been a lovely group on facebook too. There’s sixteen blocks all together, I’ve shown you a few last week, here’s some more…

Karen Styles of Somerset Patchwork designed this one, a pretty embroidery in the middle, surrounded by mini hexagons. Those hexagons were a fiddle, they’re only an inch across, corner to corner! I’m not a great lover of EPP and this didn’t enamour me to the technique!! Having said that, I love the block!

I nearly didn’t make this one, I think the colours in the original one put me off, silly I know, but it made the kitty look quite fierce. I then saw lots of other variations as people made them and it grew on me. This is the part of facebook I really like, seeing lots of different ways of making the same block. Some embroidered it, just the outlines or filling in the shapes, some did free motion embroidery round the blocks, some needle-turn appliqued it.

I decided to use bondaweb and machine sew round it. I couldn’t find my bondaweb so I ended up using Steam-a-Seam instead for the first time. Whilst I can see it’s advantages, I’m not converted, it doesn’t half gunk up your needle! However, from a point of view of being able to temporarily stick the pieces down before ironing them, it was a godsend, especially when I realised I was arranging them looking at the reverse image! I stitched them with the blanket-stitch on my sewing machine, it was fiddly but easier than I thought. The only bit I would change with hindsight is I would have free-motion stitched around the eyes, as they looked quite an intense blue before, but it’s lost with the stitching. I really like this one, it was designed by Pattern Poole.

The next one was a quick and simple one, designed by Kathy Doughty of Material Obsession. I used the Steam-a-Seam and hand-stitched round, this is when I realised just how much it gunks your needle up – more so than bondaweb.

Another one I nearly didn’t dois this one by Deidre Bond-Abel of Hot Creek Quilts. The design was for applique, to me it just felt too heavy. I saw a couple done with embroidery and decided to adapt the design slightly. I just did a single line of chain stitch for the stem, instead of a 1/4″ wide one, I narrowed the body a little and gave him some legs and googly eyes. I then just embroidered over the design.

The last one to show you is this cute design of two little birdies sitting on a swing. I made them bluebirds, I like the way this one has turned out. The design is by Country Hart Designs.

So all together I’ve made nine so far, there’s another four I want to do, making thirteen in total. This may sound an odd number but it actally works out really well. I’m planning to make some 6″ house blocks to put inbetween the embroideries. Twelve of those will make a five by five block quilt, with borders and sashings it should get up to a reasonable size….and use up most of the left over fabric!

I’ll be linking up with Kathy’s Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday, please follow the link for lots of hand-stitched inspiration.