Hello November!

Isn't this year flashing by? Christmas will be here before I know what's happening, and then I'll be amazed that the New Year has arrived - happens every time! I'm so glad I've been recording my activities here, or it would be easy to think I haven't got much done at all!

This week I indulged in a little retail therapy. Not a lot, just a little. I'm sure you're all well aware that our gorgeous Di Ford Hall sadly passed away early last year. Her lovely daughters have undertaken the daunting task of selling her stash on Instagram - and I decided to purchase a little momento.

They're such pretty fabrics, and all of them ones I'd likely use. But I think I'll keep them in my cabinet for now. Di was such a darling person, and I'm going to keep these for a really special project - perhaps one that she designed.

Also on Instagram, Karen from Somerset Patchwork was selling little scrap packets, and since I'm such a sucker for lovely reproduction fabrics I simply had to help her manage her stash!

More absolutely beautiful fabric. I'm just thrilled! Now we all know that I need more fabric like a hole in the head, but I'm letting myself believe that I haven't purchased that much this year so I deserved some treats! Hahaha! Genuinely, even if I never purchase another thing - at the rate I'm using my fabric right now - I will NEVER run out. Not ever! And you know what? That's perfectly okay!

For this weeks stitching, I made the 3rd of Marti Michell's Free Block Friday blocks:

My 30's fabrics are so much fun to work with, and I'm already planning to make some of the projects from the Farm Girl Vintage book in the future. Maybe next year?

I'm also still working on the mats for the tennis luncheon. I'm trying to be super dedicated and keep pressing on with them even though other projects continue calling to me.

I'm all done with the more modern fabrics, and I'm sticking with more traditional ones now. These are really much more my style. It's going to be hard to give some of them away.

There's a naughty little secret with these mats that I'm going to share with you - it's all to do with the batting:

Because I make SO MANY small projects during the course of a year, I rarely throw away my batting scraps - I use them all! And in this particular mat I've used some TINY pieces. To be honest, normally I would have tossed the really small pieces of batt, but because these pieces had made their way into my batt storage I decided to use them.

To make use of the scrap batts, I cut the backing fabric to the size I want, spray it lightly with 505 (glue baste) spray, arrange the batting pieces so the whole backing fabric is covered. Abut the batting, don't overlap it or you'll create lumps. Once you're satisfied that the backing is covered, spray the batt with 505 spray and place the mat/quilt on top. Because my mats are rather heavily quilted I have no concern that the batting pieces will move around. I don't recommend this technique for larger quilted projects or if you're only lightly quilting your project.

Well, that's it from me for this week, I'll be heading back into the sewing room shortly, there are more quilted mats in my future! Thank you for stopping by, I appreciate you all visiting xox

Edit: Whoops, I almost forgot to share a picture of the cake I talked about last week. My little brother's birthday cake:

Apologies for cutting Tim out of the picture - I'm not sure that he'd appreciate being a star on a quilting blog lol! I made the cake exactly to the recipe I shared last week, but I made a chocolate buttercream frosting rather than the caramel one. I wish I'd managed to get a picture of the cake when it was sliced - it looked magnificent! YUM!