Flower garden tea cosy

I made another tea-cosy, this one for a friend who's a gardener.  Most of these colours are Aran-weight left-overs, perfect for creating a colourful bunch of flowers.



Tea cosy body, flowers and leaves are from two of Loani Prior's fabulous books - How Tea Cosies Changed The World and Really Wild Tea Cosies.



Felt bobbles finish off the bottom edge nicely (I didn't make these though).



Flowers made from a mixture of Noro scraps and Aran wool from Commodum in Ireland.  Felt balls in the middle finish them off nicely!



This is the third of Loani Prior's teacosies I've knitted, but the first I've blogged.  The first was this mad creation, made with A LOT of Noro wool - I absolutely love this one and it's always a talking point when people pop in for a cuppa!



The second (also not blogged) was 'Devilish', which I made for a small white teapot.  So funny this one.



I've got another of Loani's teacosies lined up to knit for a Christmas present, which will be number four.  I'm off to make a cup of tea!
xx

Cheerful rainbow quilt

A friend of my daughter's has had to have a pretty major operation, and I wanted to cheer her up when we visited.  So I dragged out a whole rainbow of fabric and my biggest pieces of wadding, and came up with the brightest quilt I could manage!

It needed to be made in less than a week, so had to be a straightforward design, and it had to not need anything I didn't already have lying around (although admittedly I do have quite a lot of stuff "lying around").  I decided on a rainbow, because it's always cheerful.  And to get in plenty of different fabrics and interest, I split each diamond into two triangles.

I cut the triangles last Saturday, and had them all stitched into squares by the end of Sunday.  Cut the background strips and had the quilt top finished by the end of Wednesday (when I may, or may not, have been working at home).  

Quilted Thursday afternoon, bound Thursday evening (in pale grey, by machine, no time for hand finishing on this one!).  Photographed in our garden on Friday morning, where there are loads of co-ordinating flowers at the moment, and delivered to the hospital by 11am the same morning!  It was very well received I am pleased to say.

This one's a win-win - a cheerful present and a really good use for some of that huge pile of fabric.  Can't see the difference in the pile of fabric though!

Vicky xx

Hexagons quilt

Well this one took a long time!  I love the colours, and hexagons are my favourite shape, so that doesn't matter.

It's based on Science Fair (Jaybird quilts), but I wanted use my left-over Kaffe Fasset shot cottons, which were all muted colours from a sample pack.  (I used all the bright colours in this star quilt). There are a few spotty prints mixed in there too.
I also chose my own size for the quilt - maybe the only thing I did the same as Science Fair is the construction method!

The negative space is a khaki chambray from Village Haberdashery in London, which may no longer be in stock.  The backing is a Kaffe shot cotton, possibly called Blueberry.

I quilted in straight lines about an inch apart on the negative space, to keep the quilt soft.  On each hexagon I quilted six radiating lines, and a circle at the edge.  This quilting is not so obvious on the front, but stands out nicely on the back.

Very pleased with the colour scheme on this one!  One final summery picture!