Post Comment Love 1 - 4 May

Hello there, welcome to this week’s #PoCoLo - a relaxed, friendly linky which I co-host with Suzanne, where you can link any blog post published in the last week. We know you’ll find some great posts to read, and maybe some new-to-you blogs too, so do pop over and visit some of the posts linked, comment and share some of that love.

Please don’t link up posts which are older as they will be removed, and if you see older posts are linked then please don’t feel that it’s necessary to comment on those. If you were here last week it was great to have you along, if you’re new here we’re pleased you’ve joined us.

It’s been a quiet week for me online, but busy in real life. I’ve made it to a garden show - my picture this week is the rhododendron which MOH chose for our garden - and a quilt show in two successive days, and even snuck some new sewing projects in as well. I’ve now a stack of ideas I want to post about, but haven’t got to them yet - I’m sure I will at some point.

It’s a bank holiday here in the UK so we’re keeping the linky open an extra day so there’s a little bit more time to join in, have a great week.

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This April...

As predicted April has indeed been busy, and it’s brought a few surprises with it too - not all of them necessarily wanted, but such as it is we’ve needed to embrace those and roll with it. It’s not my story, though clearly I’m affected but everyone is ok and it’s why my blog has been unexpectedly quieter than I’d planned these past few days. At some point I may share more, but not just yet.

The fields around us have turned a gorgeous shade of yellow, which I love, but which MOH quite literally sneezes at. Though he has discovered a major trigger for his hayfever, so there is that. It’s the first year we’ve seen so much rapeseed growing locally, it could be just the cycle of rotation though, at some point we’ll find out - it makes for a great picture though, doesn’t it?

The month started with a trip to Wales for my youngest niece’s wedding, and somehow the celebrations coincided with those two warm - actually quite hot - days. I’m not sure how they managed that, and I’m not sure they know either - but we’re all very glad it happened that way. Sunglasses were definitely needed rather than the cold weather options I’d been anticipating!

While we were there we had a look around Ludlow, and stopped off at Powis Castle on our journey home. I wasn’t prepared for the size of the 300 year old yew hedges there, and so it was a great garden for me, and a pleasant surprise!

I’ll be sharing more of my photos from there, but just wow to the size of these hedges - and to the job of keeping them in trim, that’s got to be quite a task.

It’s great to see the gardens waking up as spring really comes into its own, my garden has suddenly taken off and throughout the month the blossom on the crab apple tree has formed, blossomed and gone for another year - hopefully there’ll be plenty of crab apples later in the year.

Closer to home we enjoyed the Bluebell walk at local Flintham Hall. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many bluebells before, but I’m more than happy to do so again. I was pleased to learn that the gardens will also open in May as part of the National Gardens Scheme, so I’m looking forward to another visit to see a different part of the grounds.

It’s also the time of year for the Newark Garden Show and we went along on the first day of the show, this year armed with a ‘possible plant list’ - we did buy some of those, but we also bought off list, including a lilac rhododendron, which has been on a longer term wish list. Though for some reason my camera roll is of random shots like the one below, which I guess means it’s more inspiration and future shopping based, than just a day out.

We’ve been holiday planning and looking at returning to the Loire region of France, this time travelling all the way by train. If we’re lucky we may add some cycling to this, or we may just stick with some walking, but our plans include staying at a chateau or two, some wine tasting and return visit to the Chateau and gardens of Villandry.

We’ve had our first barbecue of the year - amazing for April - and tried a new to us restaurant in Nottingham, thoroughly enjoying our meal at Skein, so I’m pretty sure we’ll be back. There’s been a Portuguese wine tasting in Newark, but I found most of the wines more ‘challenging’ than previously but the evening was designed to showcase the diversity in the region, and it certainly did that.

I also discovered that my gold trainers cause my achilles pain, so I’ll be giving those a very wide berth for the foreseeable future; and when in Nottingham last week I seemed to have randomly hurt the top of my foot, the same one obviously, so I’ve been icing and elevating it as much as I can, which seems to have done the trick. I know that for the RICE approach there’s supposed to be the ‘rest’ element too - but with the Newark Garden Show and a quilt show at Uttoxeter almost immediately after the random swelling, that was always going to be tricky.

I went along to the Quilt & Stitch Village show with friends from my sewing group. It’s a show that wouldn’t have even been on my radar before I moved here, but it was a great little show which is held at the racecourse, and as it’s just an hour and a half away by train, so that’s what we did. The station is right next to the racecourse, so as walking goes it was relatively lighter than expected, which was definitely good for me.

Though I never thought I’d be buying material with beetroots and onions on, but I did - and I love them. I’ve no plans yet, but I’d not seen anything like this before and knew instantly that they’d be coming home with me. It was great to see some new to me suppliers at the show, along with some familiar favourites, and of course there was also a quilt or two on display!

Over the past however long I’ve been crocheting larger granny squares at my crochet in the pub group, and this month I reached the eight squares I’d been aiming for. My plan is to use them to embellish a tote bag, but first I had plenty of ends to sew in. It’s not my most favourite job, but remarkably they were sewn in within a couple of days - look out for the finished project which I’m hoping to share soon.

I also realised that I probably had enough scrappy houses now to make my first ‘village quilt’, and so today I’ve finished my first charity quilt of the year. I’d hoped to have finished it and shared it before now, but that life surprise got in the way of this too, so that quilt update will also follow soon, I hope.

I signed myself up for the online taster weekend for the Thread Academy as I’d seen Jo Avery’s delightful ‘Dream Birds Coin Purse’ and thought I’d have a go at making my own. I mean, a bird shaped pouch - what’s not to like.

This is as far as I’ve got at the moment, and clearly the taster weekend has been and gone now, but I have enough information and hopefully wherewithal to finish it and to do it justice. Isn’t it super cute already though?

So that was April, both brilliant and at times uplanned and unexpected. I’m hoping that May, my birthday month, goes a little more to plan!

Pictorial quilts to make you gasp

Last week I shared the Art quilts, which are designed as pieces of art and this week I’m sharing the relatively similar category of Pictorial quilts. The quilts in this category are quilts depicting a scene or a subject, such as people, animals, flowers etc as the main body of the quilt.

Knowing the boundaries of the category really helps, and once you see the quilts I’m sharing today I’m pretty sure you’re going to gasp. Each and every one of them are truly amazing and I don’t even want to start thinking about the number of hours that has gone into each one. Though I’m not sure I’d want a gorilla on my bed…

SHE MATTERS, SUE DE VANNY

SHE MATTERS, SUE DE VANNY

Though it’s amazing isn’t it? More so I think when you look closely at the quilting and its composition. I’ve actually seen this quilt twice now as it was also at the Harrogate Knit & Stitch show, and both times I’ve been wowed by it.

This second quilt is quite different in style and at first glance you could be mistaken to thinking that it’s a simple design, but look again and see the colours flow from pink to blue effortlessly, and the composition of the lower leaves and vases, and you realise it’s not quite as simple as you first thought.

FLORAL ABUNDANCE, JENNY BRADBURY

With a cyclist in the house (clue: it’s not me!) I had to include this one didn’t I? And the blocks of bold colours really work here I think.

POGI, AURORA CALVET

There were a few nature inspired quilts too, this ‘under the sea’ view had plenty to look at when you stepped back, but when you move closer there’s even more to see as it’s made from small hexagons pieced together.

MEERBEDECKT, RENATE KÄMMER

MEERBEDECKT, RENATE KÄMMER

I don’t even want to contemplate the number of hours spent making this one, let alone having the inspiration to even make it.

This bug was cute though with all its blues and slightly less overwhelming to my eyes.

LAURA’S BEETLE, LINDA SMITH

And then there were butterflies perched on flowers with the most beautifully quilted background.

MONARCH BUTTERFLY, INJA METZGER & MARIA SCHATEN

The final two quilts I’m sharing really do fit the pictorial brief, and are worthy of more than one gasp. As I approached the monochrome quilt below, I thought to myself it had a touch of Breakfast at Tiffany’s to it, as I got closer I saw it was titled ‘a beauty from the swinging 60s’ so I was just a decade out!

BEAUTY FROM THE SWINGING 60S, VICTORIA MILLER

But I hope you’ve saved some gasps, as you’ll need it for this one. It’s so good it doesn’t look as if it’s been sewn together, but painted - and just look at the detail on the frame alone.

A WIND FROM THE NORTH, ANDREA LEA MCVEY

It’s no surprise though that this quilt was voted the Visitor’s Choice Winner, and thoroughly deserved. It really is in a class of its own, and not something I’m ever likely to attempt!