Catching up at last

Where has April gone? Suddenly I'm up against the deadline for the CQ Journal Quilt challenge and am rushing to finish! Taking time out for a visit to Clitheroe on Tuesday may not have been such a good idea, but it was a super day for driving over the moors! I had never been to Clitheroe before, but it is a lovely little Lancashire town and reminded me of visits to Chorley all those years ago in another life!

Sandra and I went to see the Textilia 111 exhibition at the Platform Gallery and were very impressed. This group is quite small, but very talented and the pieces were all very different. The gallery is also very well stocked with lovely jewellery, bags and other hand crafted items. Then to Molly's Cafe for lunch and a stroll through the castle grounds before heading back home via Embsay Mills for much needed fabric!
I decided we needed to see the moors, and we certainly did that, ending up driving along a gated road through a farm yard!

What a beautiful day out! Pendle hill looming at us. Lapwings, Redkites and even a Buzzard overhead. Blue skies and signs of Spring everywhere.

So my March JQ, long planned did not take long to stitch. I am sticking to the theme of raw edge applique with curves, but for this quilt I decided to use some of the decorative stitches on my machine rather than free machine embroidery. The design was inspired by seeing fields of daffodils and winter wheat on our recent trip to Cornwall. I used a piece of Indigo dyed fabric for the sky and it worked very well and it really looks like a March day. My mitred corners will probably not stand too close an inspection, but I am quite pleased with it.

For my April quilt, I decided to stay with the curved piecing theme but I was a bit stumped for a design. In the end I decided to just use the colours in the fabric and the curves as the design to reflect all the lovely colours of Spring inspired by a visit to Caerhays gardens on Easter Sunday. The Camellias were all out, and some of the Magnolias were beginning to come out, but seem to have been knocked back by the bad winter. On our way back to the cafe, we turned a corner and were confronted with a magenta Magnolia that just seemed to leap out at us.

So now I can relax because all I have to do is finish my postcard to Kay, my Batik challenge quilt for Sandra, a birthday outfit for Isobel........ Why do I do it?

Just because I love it!!!