Send in the clowns

By which I mean our furry guests.

Mouse brings a certain…. gravitas to his position of Supreme Boss of the Household. He does indulge in the odd roach (aka, greyhound sleeping on its back with legs in the air), and does zoom around the backyard in a very uninhibited way when properly encouraged, but he’s not usually plain daft. Our guests, on the other hand….

Sunshine, sleeping

Tiny, sleeping with his eyes open

Well, you can see what I’m talking about. It’s very, very distracting!

They’ve gone home now, as their Staff have returned from a well-earned break on Hamilton Island. We returned them in one piece, fed, watered, dosed and walked, and are told that the favour will be returned if we ever need to travel somewhere without His Lordship for a few days.

I confess, it was worse than herding cats. It was like caring for rambunctious 3-year-old triplets: noses into everything, restless trooping from room to room, bed to bed, stealing toys, cadging treats. Out, please. In, please. Scratches, please. Oh well, it’s over now!

I did manage to get a little sewing done once they’d gone. It has been so long since I managed a Parterre block, I wanted to see if I still could! This is Parterre Block 27. Sorry about the lousy lighting, it’s very gloomy and overcast today.

Parterre Block 27

I have the fabrics picked out for the next one, and it’s on my work table, ready to go.

Hopefully normal service will now be resumed. Hopefully…

Parterre: a bit of eye-candy

Just a little something to please the eye…

I’ve decided it’s going to be a bit bigger. Originally, I was going for a 5×6 block layout, 30 blocks in total. However, normally I work with 12 inch blocks, and these are only 10 inch blocks, so 5×6 didn’t give me a functional quilt, only a decorative one. So, I’m going to make it 6×7, which will give me something I can snuggle under. I’ve made 25 blocks now. Another 17 to go…

And without further ado, here’s where we are so far. This isn’t any kind of a considered layout, it’s an auto-fill from a free online collage-maker.

And already, I’m in love with it ❤️❤️❤️….

It’s going to be spectacular!

Bee, Myself & I #55, Parterre Blocks 22 & 23

And here we are again.

I was having so much fun that I decided to crack on with a couple more, and having done that, I thought, well, why wait till the end of the month?  So here’s some more eye-candy.

Another pair of brightly coloured flower blocks, more eye-searing, er,  -catching colour, and it seems I’m back in the swing again after those months of absence. Some of these fabrics are making a repeat appearance, some are new. As always, the yoyos are recycled from an earlier quilt project.

7 more blocks to go, and I can start assembling. I have more fabric pairs sorted out, plus a trayful of others, so it should be a relatively simple task to just pick another set, make another block, rinse and repeat. But you know how it is. Stuff gets in the way. Let’s see how I get on.

Bee, Myself and I is a forum for ‘selfish sewing’; any stitchery which is purely for pleasure and not to a deadline or for anyone else. The original concept belongs to Carla of Granny Maud’s Girl. To find out more, you can click through on either her blog link, or using the button a fair way down in the left hand column of this blog.

Till next time.

Bee, Myself & I #54: Parterre Block 21

Gosh, it’s been an age!

Lots of things have got in the way of the smooth roll-out of these blocks. But I’m finally back at it. One shown below, and another in the pipeline. Block 21 is a nice bright, graphic version once again. I do need the more muted ones to create a bit of visual contrast, but these bright ones are my favourites 😊 Nine more to go, and I can start considering how I’m going to put this quilt together.

I’m sorry the light on this one isn’t very good for some reason, but the colour reproduction isn’t too bad. Don’t you love the contrast between the very linear pink and white fabric with the formal leaf design on the other one? Completely non-obvious as a pairing, but to my eye at least, it just works!

Bee, Myself and I is a forum for ‘selfish sewing’; any stitchery which is purely for pleasure and not to a deadline or for anyone else. The original concept belongs to Carla of Granny Maud’s Girl. To find out more, you can click through on either her blog link, or using the button a fair way down in the left hand column of this blog.

See you next month, hopefully!

Bee, Myself & I #53, Parterre block 20

I thought I’d better keep up with this one. There’s a long way to go…

Back to the usual format of flower contrasting with leaves. This is block 20. I have almost none of the left hand leaf fabric, which I’m sad about, as I love it. I have the remainder of a 25cm length of width of fabric of the one on the right, a Martha Negley print I love but which I’ve been unable to find a use for until now. I’ve had it for about 6 or 7 years.

It’s a very light-coloured block overall, and I think I’ll have to make a few more like this or it’ll stick out like a sore thumb when placed amongst all the others in their saturated-colour glory.

Bee, Myself and I is a forum for ‘selfish sewing’; any stitchery which is purely for pleasure and not to a deadline or for anyone else. The original concept belongs to Carla of Granny Maud’s Girl. To find out more, you can click through on either her blog link, or using the button a fair way down in the left hand column of this blog.

See you next month, hopefully!

Bee, Myself & I #52, Parterre Block 19

Gosh, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?

End of January, to be exact. When time is short, it’s always the projects you’re doing for yourself that fall by the wayside, and Parterre is no exception. It’s probably just as well all the blocks are all slightly different and assembly is involved, as they form sort of mini-projects in their own right. The process is very familiar by now, as is the order in which things need to be assembled. The difference comes from the colours and combinations of fabrics.

This one is a tiny bit different in that the flower almost matches, rather than being quite different from the other fabrics. I like the effect, and I may make a few more like this and sprinkle them around the layout of the finished quilt. At some point, I’ll also have to decide how many blocks I’m making. These blocks are 10 inches square. I suspect I will lose the will to live if I have to make enough blocks to achieve lap quilt size, so I’ll probably end up bordering each block to bring it up to 12 inches, and then sash. That will also have the virtue of standardising the final size of each block.

Bee, Myself and I is a forum for ‘selfish sewing’; any stitchery which is purely for pleasure and not to a deadline or for anyone else. The original concept belongs to Carla of Granny Maud’s Girl. To find out more, you can click through on either her blog link, or using the button a fair way down in the left hand column of this blog.

Until next time… whenever that is!

BM&I #50, Parterre Block 17

After a month off, I’m back on for Bee, Myself and I.

Block 17 is a contrast to the deep rich blues of last month. It’s dry, parched and hot in North Queensland, which has inspired this dry, hot-coloured block in the colours of the Australian earth.

At some stage, I’ll do another collage image to show where I’ve got to. It has been a while since the last one. I think I’m probably just past the halfway mark now, so it would be a worthwhile exercise, even if it’s just to see where I have colour gaps in the line-up.

Bee, Myself and I is a forum for ‘selfish sewing’; any stitchery which is purely for pleasure and not to a deadline or for anyone else. The original concept belongs to Carla of Granny Maud’s Girl. To find out more, you can click through on either her blog link, or using the button a fair way down in the left hand column of this blog.

Until next time…

BM&I #49: Parterre block 16

I absolutely love this one!

Deep, rich dark blue and bright colours, one a huge blowsy floral and the other a cute, folksy print, but with very similar colour values. I adore the contrast of scale and the similarities of colour.

Here’s Block 16 of the Parterre quilt:

 Bee, Myself and I is a forum for ‘selfish sewing’; any stitchery which is purely for pleasure and not to a deadline or for anyone else. The original concept belongs to Carla of Granny Maud’s Girl. To find out more, you can click through on either her blog link, or using the button a fair way down in the left hand column of this blog.

Until next time…

BM&I #48: Parterre block 15

Finally, Block 15, after missing Bee, Myself and I completely last month.

Blues, for a change. It’s quite a striking block, combining as it does not one but two high-impact prints. The one on the left is from a quilt I made at least 12 years ago, and may be the last significant piece of that fabric I have left. No scraps left behind in this household…

Here’s Block 15 of the Parterre quilt:

 Bee, Myself and I is a forum for ‘selfish sewing’; any stitchery which is purely for pleasure and not to a deadline or for anyone else. The original concept belongs to Carla of Granny Maud’s Girl. To find out more, you can click through on either her blog link, or using the button a fair way down in the left hand column of this blog.

Until next time…

BM&I #47: Parterre block 14

Here’s Block 14. I love this one!

It’s becoming apparent that my bright colour fabrics tend towards the warm side of the spectrum. It may be time to do a spot of fabric shopping, so isn’t it lovely that Covid-19 restrictions are slowly lifting, despite a recent flare up down south ;-D

Here’s Block 14 of the Parterre quilt:

And because I may be almost halfway through making the blocks, here’s a fun little collage of where I’ve got to so far. The blocks are, of course, the same size as each other in real life. Visualise them joined by narrow black sashing, perhaps with a brightly-coloured cornerstone at each intersection. Does anyone feel there’s a gap in the colour scheme, a colour missing from the line up? All suggestions considered (but not necessarily acted upon!). I know it’s hard when they’re all different sizes. And I think I’ve come as close to brown as I’m going to. Just sayin’.

Bee, Myself and I is a forum for ‘selfish sewing’; any stitchery which is purely for pleasure and not to a deadline or for anyone else. The original concept belongs to Carla of Granny Maud’s Girl. To find out more, you can click through on either her blog link, or using the button a fair way down in the left hand column of this blog.

Until next time…