A Garden Theme

Today Eva's Garden arrived at its new home, after a lot of very late nights, and just in time for Eva's first birthday on Sunday. Unusually, this quilt photographs better with flash; the colours without are much different (although I prefer the bluer, muted version without flash, below!).

But the advantage of my new hanging location is that I can stand well back, and this minimises the way the edges of the quilt are out of focus.

I also love using our bridge; especially with some afternoon sun:

I did a meander on the background kaleidoscope blocks, outlined the purple inner and outer points on the New Yory Beauty blocks, and a double-swirl around the buitterflies in the main border. I will never try the latter again! Here's a small section which worked reasonably well:

Eva's mother requested a matching pillowcase to go with the quilt, so I made two. I kept the piecing to the side, because I don't think the seams would be soft enough on a face, especially the cheek of a litttle girl! And I used the remaining backing fabric for the rest - mostly because it's nice and soft. I detest sheets and pillowcases that are remotely scratchy, and have been known to get out of bed, strip the sheets and wash them again, because they're uncomfortable. Just another reason why I love winter - flanelette sheets are always soft! I appliqued a butterfly on each from the tiny scraps remaining from the quilt's main border. For some reason, blogger insists on rotating the photo 90deg clockwise:

Along with this, Winter's Garden went in the mail to a surprise recipient yesterday. Here's a fun peek. I'd folded it up after photographing the label, and it sprung open to reveal a good photo opportunity I couldn't resist, even though it almost made me late to the post office! More of this one once it arrives in ...........

And finally a glimpse of some fabrics for my FSQS to be called Plant in Full Sun:

I went through several ideas and umpteen redesigns before settling on what I'd do. Now I just have to hope I can pull it off to my satisfaction.