The top is done..

Well, eventually it became too big to hang on my design wall so it had to come down. 71"x71" of pure bohemian, vibrant goodness is ready for basting and quilting:

Last quilt ?

While adding borders, I'm thinking this will be the last quilt i ever make - it looks too good on my wall and totally brightens up my sewing room, so I don't want to ever want to take it down again :)

Nah just kidding... Once quilting get to you there's no stopping. I have another idea for a kaleidescope quilt I have to try at some point. I'm really getting hooked on this block.

Pattern: Saltwater Taffy from the book Uncommonly Corduroy by Stephanie Dunphy.

Colour explosion

Update: Auch... I'm being hit in the head by Mr. Nemesis, for assuming I didn't misplace the pieces. Looking at the pictures below I realised that I did manage to screw up despite my perkiness and the needle. Second last block buttom row from the right. See it? Happy to say the grey in now in the right place. Funny how you see things in a picture that you don't notice when standing in front of the real piece.

I'm totally wind up and excited this morning...  I finished piecing the blocks for the centre of Saltwater Taffy fom the book Uncommonly Corduroy. What a colour explosion, right?

It went together smoothless and I didn't have to unpick anything, which is good considered I misplaced my seam ripper and my LQS is closed this week.  A little trick I used to make sure I added the right corner triangles was to place a needle in the top wedge. This way you can twist and turn and still be sure what's up and down, left and right. I don't know if it's so obvious that everybody is already doing it? I think it overall saved me a lot of time .

I enlarged the template a little so the blocks ended up 10 3/4"

Now on to piecing the blocks and consider options for the borders.

A small finish

I made the lavender bag - or rather lavender pad - with linnen. Inner fabric and lavender bag is AMH fabric. It's 6x6 inches so rather big and flat, closed with a single lavender blue button. It's filled with lavender from the garden in Provence. The embroidery pattern is an old Swedish print.

It's been a long time since I did any embroidery - it was fun :)

Now I'm going to pack it up and send it off to France with a little 'thank you and hope to see you again' note.

Back and fourth

Today I'm working on two projects - back and fourth as my temper pleases :)

A lavender bag which will go to France as a little thank you to the sweet and helpful Madame who rented out the gite we stayed in in France - we made good friends. Just before we left she asked me to take some lavender with me home from her own garden and I'm going to return some in a pretty little bag:

And of course the kaleidescope Saltwater Taffy from Uncommonly Corduroy - piecing blocks so I can free up some space on my design wall for the last two columns:

Back from vacation

Ah... We've been in South of France for two weeks enjoying life, drinking good wine and just relaxing.  The wi-fi didn't work and there was no TV in the gite we rented, so it was quite literally a change fom the normal life. Lovely none the less...

My view at our rented house from the shade, while the pool was being cleaned by the robot. I wish cleaning at home felt as good as this...

Dinner at the local (nice) restaurant - everybody is eating outside under the trees. We were in the heart of the Rhone wine district so finding excellent wine wasn't the biggest of our problems:

One if my birthday gifts from DH was tickets to Camina Burana in the old roman theatre in Orange. Simply fantastic!  The music, the scenography, the French people enjoying the night. The orchestra gave three encores... Did I already use the word fantastic? Cause it really was...

The boys had fun with the so called animals on site (I prefer the term creeps). Here is a small lizard on my oldest arm. The boys didn't even miss TV :)

This is how we got news from the outside world - a paper from the local Tabac picked up in the morning while getting fresh bread and croissants. 

And finally a picture of our lovely terrace - perfect shaded by a climbing rose bush. 

I hope we can go back to Sablet some day... What a great holiday. Now I have a week at home before work starts again. Looking forward to catching up on blogs and of course dive into my kaleidescope which is waiting for me :)

Design wall and contrasts

Having learned my lesson from the previous quilt, this time I'm taking the time to play a little on the design wall before making even one stitch...

Still moving fabrics around. I'm having fun :)