Autumn’s Bounty!

The most stunning gift Autumn gives us is the glorious blaze of colour before she gives way to Mr. Winter…I also love the gifts of fat pumpkins, golden pears full of juice and flavour, and too many leaves to pick up and treasure…I never can make up my mind which ones to pick up and which ones to leave behind, and what am I going to do with them anyway?! Well I pressed some today, with a mind to replicating the colours somehow next week…

Maybe it was the season which drew me to the image I chose for my colour workshop, and here is a wee update on how the little quilt from that day is progressing.
I have had to take off borders and prune it a bit, because folksy though it is, I couldn’t live with its crookedness, best fix that I thought, before the hand applique and the hand quilting fest begins!

The last picture is some little scraps of long treasured fabrics and threads; the prints are going to be the centres for the Dresden Plates (flowers) and the oyster coloured silk will make leaves to hand applique on the vertical long red check panel at the left. That was a shirt I kept of my mother’s, knew I would use it wonder. Probably the fact that I’ve used new fabric and old has led to the distortion…which I think is fixed.

I’m going to stitch the hearts down first by machine, almost invisibly, then use the rich rust gold and claret coloured threads to make primitive stitches…I’m enjoying doing this piece.

The best thing about having a good stash behind you is that whenever the mood or season hits you, and you’re champing at the bit to get cracking, you can go to your secret hoard and pull out your treasures and start straight away. I never buy for a specific project; I buy for a dream, a bit of wishful thinking and belief! And I like lots of little pieces to make a really broad, blendable palette.

Back tomorrow with an update!