And more stitching ...

This week I have been enjoying the lillies that are blooming in our garden. Most of the time I leave these in the garden, but I was told (and I don't know if it's true or not) that cutting the blooms encourages them to flower even more. I'm happy to put this theory to the test:

The runner on the dining table is one of my absolute favourites. It was quilted by my dear friend Lizzy and is always much admired. I do have a new runner made from red and cream French General fabrics in progress - I think I've been working on it for at least seven years, but we all know you just can't rush art. I may have to change it from a hand piecing project to a machine project just to make some headway!

In other news, I was super happy to get the little Winnie the Pooh top together. These are my final blocks for the Churn Dash Sewalong - this has been a fun project to be part of, I'll be sad when it's all finished and done.

I'm going to have fun quilting it over the upcoming school holiday break. Not that I have any small people in school of course, but tennis and my quilting ladies are on hiatus during the holidays, so I have a little more time on my hands. Whether I use this free time for the good remains to be seen! :-)

And last of all, I almost finished stitching down the applique pieces on the first border of Lily Rosenberry, just a little more and I'll pop the next border on:

That is a wrinkly old picture isn't it? But I thought you might like to see the back of Lily warts and all. it's not often you see the messy side of an applique project. I have one stem, nine berries and some yellow flower parts to stitch down, and also a bunch of thread tails to trim. Lily Rosenberry has been such a lovely project to work on, and I cannot wait to get to the quilting stage.

Last of all, I wanted to talk about threads for a moment. I bought some new coloured spools today to fill in some gaps in my thread rainbow, and also some cones of neutral colours as they're what I generally always piece with. Then I removed some cones of variegated thread from my thread-stand, as I've started using these variegated threads for piecing scrap quilts - I just don't seem to reach for them for machine quilting my projects anymore. I feel like I got swept up by the fancy colour combinations, and for whatever reason now I always just go for a single colour thread. Is anyone else finding they don't reach for variegated threads anymore? 

Well, that's it from me for this week, hope everyone is safe and well, chatter soon xox