I’ve made reasonable progress on my seaside quilt, though not as much as I hoped as I ended up distracted this week by the Little Book of Comfort and Flossie the Barts Bunny! This is the quilt design by Kathryn Whittingham, she kindly gave me the book after I enjoyed making her Cottage Quilt so much.

Three weeks ago I had finished the top row and just started four of the smaller embroidered blocks.

The lifebuoy still needed some rope stitching on it. The instructions call for perle thread, whilst I have a good selection I haven’t any white, so I found some thick but smooth thread inn my stash and used my cordmaker to twist it into a length of cord. Once it was made it was just couched in place…I say just, but I needed my biggest chenile needle to get the cord through the fabric for all the loops round the ring!

Last time I wasn’t keen on my bumble bee beach hut. A few of you suggested changing the front door,well thank you, it worked brilliantly! I couldn’t remove the old yellow door as it was bondawebbed on so I just stuck a new door over the top. I decided not to add the heart in the middle as it was already hard to stitch with three layers of fabric and two layers of bondaweb. If I feel it needs something at the end I can always add a tiny button.

I’ve made up the sets of four squares to go in between the lifebuoy and the beach hut, I haven’t stitched them into a long row yet as I want to see how the colours work. This will be in a line going down in the quilt, it was just easier to put a long photo across ways here!

I embroidered the lollypop to go with the 99 ice-cream though they are at the other end of this quilt row.

Next to make up were two flying geese blocks with fussycut fabric in the middle. Theses are made with half square triangles, rather than the usual way of a rectangle base. This makes it easier to stitch this particular block together. I’ve made all the half square triangles and trimmed half of them to size, just need to trim the others and stitch the squares together. At the moment the blocks look quite dark and prominent, but I think they will settle down once everything else is made. I love this harbour fabric by Macower, it reminds me of Whitby, there’s a photo of Whitby below.

The next block is one of my favourites. The Yorkshire coastline has lots of little villages right on the coastline, hugging the cliffs round the natural harbours such as Staithes and Robinhoods Bay, we walked through many of them when we did the Cleveland Way a couple of years ago…

This block perfectly captures the higgledy piggledy nature of these villages. I haven’t finished the embroidery yet but I’ve made a good start.

The windows looked pretty dominating to begin with, but once I embroidered the window frames on in a very light grey they settled down nicely. I’ve still to do the shoreline and the seal bobbing about in the sea – that’s the grey blob!

Hopefully by the time I next post about my Seaside quilt in another three weeks time this row will be starting to come together.

If you fancy making this quilt the book is available (together with the cottage garden quilt book) from Kathryn’s website, Patchwork Katy. They’re both gorgeous designs and the instructions are very easy to follow.

Affiliate links; I was kindly gifted this book by the author, but my views and opinions of the quilt and the book are my own.

Hand Quilt Along Links

This Hand Quilt Along is an opportunity for hand quilters and piecers to share and motivate one another. We post every three weeks, to show our progress and encourage one another.  If you have a hand quilting project and would like to join our group contact Kathy at the link below.Kathy, Margaret, Deb, Nanette, Sharon, Karrin, and Daisy

I’ll also be linking up with Kathy’s Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday