Oh! I appear to have bought yet more books. Nevermind.

 

Couldn't resist this trio, picked up in the same charity shop.  I was never a Harry Potter fan - I'd already aged out of childrens and YA fiction well before they were published - but I love J.K. Rowling's Strike novels.  While 'The Casual Vacancy' isn't one of that series, I still think there's a pretty good chance I'll enjoy it.  Simon Schama's 'Rough Crossings' won't be the cheeriest of reads, covering as it does slavery and the American War of Independence, but it never does any harm to educate yourself about world history, does it?  The other book - 'Fair Fight' - looks intriguing.  Set in the Victorian Age and featuring a woman pugilist.  The blurb on the cover promises the novel will take you 'from a filthy brothel to the finest houses in town, from the world of street-fighters to the world of champions.  Alive with the smells and the sounds of the streets, it is a raucous, intoxicating tale of courage, reinvention and fighting your way to the top'.  That's got to be worth a try, and anyway I'm a sucker for a handsome hardback and this book's in mint condition.  

It's been the most beautiful day here in West Yorkshire.  Blue sky and sunshine.  The trees are still full of blossom, including this beautiful apple blossom.  Such delicate shades of pink, so pretty.

I've been gardening - sorting out various ceramic planters, potting up strawberry plants and deadheading tulips - and also nipped down to the allotment for a while, to pull up weeds and keep things reasonably tidy.  Back home I got the urge to work on a quilt I began months and months ago.  Maybe over a year?  Anyway, it's going to be similar to an earlier one I made, which you can see in the photo below.  

Ages ago I came across some video interviews with a quilter called Chris English, and this scrappy quilt was inspired by his work. 

I love it.  The zingy colours. The scrappy make-do-and-mend zero waste approach of using odds and ends of wildly different shapes and patterns. 

In fact, I liked making and using the quilt so much I decided to make a second one.  But that project, despite getting off to a good start, had floundered and been put aside.  However, today out my work-in-progress came, and I went through what I'd done so far.  

I've got a number of blocks in various stages of completion.  Let me run through how I make this style of quilt.  I gather up several small scraps of fabric in a particular colour and sew them together to make a six inch square.  I back each pieced square with a square of white or cream cotton, attaching the cotton by sewing a running stitch around each individual scrap.  This should make the finished quilt more durable.

Four of these six inch pieced squares are sewn together to make a large block, then when I've got enough of the large blocks they get sewn together until I've reached whatever size patchwork top I want.  After that, it's a matter of making a 'quilt sandwich' - adding wadding, backing material and a scrappy binding.  

I thought I'd add extra interest by including these upcycled vintage tablecloths and traycloths, all bought from charity shops.  They're backed with iron-on interfacing, and I've appliqued a bird on to one of them.  

I also embroidered a couple of bees, and might dot a few more of these around the quilt.  I've still got lots more to do with this scrappy quilt, but it feels good to have re-started it.  Progress may not be speedy, but there's a lot of enjoyment in slow stitching and it's not as if I'm working to a deadline.  I can simply please myself!