Cuggle

And here is my third finish for the year! Cuggle was made for the wonderful (and very hands-on) director of James and Eleanor's child care centre.

Sharon told me that Jo likes earthy colours, which got me started. Surprisingly I found this challenging to design, and played with a lot of options before finally settling on this layout.

I didn't realise while I was designing it just how many pieces were involved - but I figured it out pretty quickly once I started piecing! It didn't stop there. I then spent ages dithering over a quilting design, and ended up choosing one which required a lot of marking time - as well as making my own stencil! But I'm really pleased with how it came out.

The feather quilting on the red/orange blocks extends into the neighbouring green blocks' backgrounds.

The swirl quilting on the green was all freehand.

Despite the heavy quilting, this quilt is still quite soft, as I used flannel for the backing.

I filled the wide border with feathering on one side of an irregular wavy line, and tucked little freehand plumes of feathers into the small gaps.

I just managed to decide on a name for this quilt in time to get the label on so that James could hand deliver it yesterday, on his last day of child care! It was as well-received as I could hope for, so everyone's happy.