I know I should be working on my 2020 BOM quilt  , but last  night I got back into my sewing room for the first time since my mum died and there is no therapy like making a baby quilt. Also my friend’s first grandchild is now a day overdue, so it is going to be needed soon.
Decided just to make a different version of one I made before with appliqué farm animals (: I still had the cut out appliqué patterns and the blocks are simple blocks in blocks).. The mum-to be had asked for an animal theme and bright colours, so I had much fun digging out all my animal fabrics.. Hiw wonderful to do something normal again! 

I was thinking ahead and looking for blue wide fabric to back my b.o.m quilt. I couldn’t see anything I liked.
 I then got an email from Dawsons’s Dept Store, from where I often get quilt covers, towels etc. I looked at their most discounted quilt covers and bought a 100% cotton double duvet cover ( V&A) for £14, which must be at least 4m of extra wide good quality fabric. There is free postage over £50  , so I just had to buy another different one for my stash, some towels for my daughter and a beach towel( ever hopeful we might get to even a chilly Scottish one this year!) Much better value than buying fabric by the metre and I’ve even got some buttons I could use on my knitted things. 

Started out this week making a nursery fabric basket as a gift. When looking for fabric, I found a bag of left over bits of non patchwork fabric and was inspired to make storage baskets for the sewing room, then made one as a birthday gift. It got a bit addictive!   [ You are not allowed to view attachments ]  

Have just sewn the last blocks to my crosshatch quilt, which is intended as a wedding quilt for my daughter. It still has a 6” border of light then dark strips to be added.  I wanted it to be practical , with not too much light fabric and a range of colours to match different rooms.
I laid out the blocks 2 rows at a time, when I was sewing the blocks, but now it’s all together I see unintentional patterns, especially when I took a photo e.g. from 7 down and 6 in to 9 down and 4 in there’s a very dark strip. The idea is that the darkish strips go left to right and the lightish ones right to left. Should I try to reposition some of the blocks or just accept the randomness? Only 6 weeks to the wedding, so need to get on!

I have had my eye on this quilt as a possible wedding quilt. I found the photo on Pinterest, but the link is just to an Instagram account, so no instructions. The person who posted said there was a ‘trick’ to making it. I wondered if anyone has made this pattern.

 My guess is you make the light squares with dark border squares ( I plan to cut 5.5” square light fabric and border of 3” dark fabric). That’s the easy bit. I think you probably then make a dark centred square with 3” light border and cut it into 4 diagonally to make the 4 outside corners. I might be wrong even about this .

 I’ve been trying trial and error to work out border thickness and the size of the square to be cut up, but there must be a mathematical way, which would avoid me wasting fabric . My husband has a maths degree, but he doesn’t understand what I’m getting at. Hope you Dark Siders are on my wavelength and can give me tips 

My daughter is marrying in July and has bought a very simple chiffon dress with a lace over jacket. She thinks she may take the jacket off at the reception and would prefer to have straps on the dress.
Do any of you experts have any ideas? She will need to have it taken up, so there will be some matching chiffon available. I’m not doing the taking up myself as I’m not skillful enough ( mainly a patchworker!) to deal with all the layers of fine fabric, but I think I could do the straps. I don’t want the straps to detract from the pretty off the shoulder neckline of the jacket, so I wonder is there anything I could do other than simple shoe string straps. Originally I thought of pleated chiffon straps, but not sure how that would work.
Any ideas would be most welcome.

Hi, I’ve been asked to make 2 excluders for son’s in laws, but I can’t find the pattern I used last time I made one of these. It would be so much quicker not to have to make my own. Does anyone know of a free pattern?

Hi, I have 2 metres of 147cm wide cuddle fleece. I bought it to back a quilt as it looked quite pale aqua on the website, but is really a stronger turquoise colour. It cost me £14 plus £3 postage, but if you can use it you can have it for £8 including postage.