Making my mystery block of the month: April

You’ll have seen that I plan to complete Sherri’s mystery block a month quilt and yesterday I shared the test blocks which I made into my sixth charity quilt, today I’m sharing the friendship star block I made for my own quilt.

I had a feeling that this month would be another star block, after all there’d been the cute houses, the vintage star and then the heart last month - and I wasn’t wrong, was I? So I suspect that the alternate months will also be stars, and so I formulated another plan, in that I’d use the navy materials for all the stars using these blocks to ‘punctuate’ my quilts.

I don’t know if I’m right, but I do know that next month’s block isn’t a star, so I’ve a fifty-fifty chance when the next block is released at the start of June, haven’t I?

Anyway, with navy chosen and with my test blocks completed more easily than I expected, I was ready to get going. In fact so much so, that I only stopped to take a picture once it was completely assembled.

I’m about to blow my own trumpet here, but I was really pleased with how the points lined up with the centre square of the star, and I was keeping most things crossed to see how the outer points worked out when I added the outer borders.

Back to the original border fabrics

Last month I spent some time pondering whether or not to introduce new green fabrics into the borders, even drawing myself a scribbled plan. And that helped, a lot. It meant that this month I knew that this block was the first block on my second row of the finished quilt, and so the borders needed to be the original greens.

Though I did need to lay them out and double check that before attaching them.

Happy with that, and they were soon attached.

The completed friendship star block with green borders on the left/top and the paler patterned borders on the bottom/right

And look, I kept all the points too. I’m super happy with how this one turned out, points and all - though I’m sure this is more by luck than judgement, but also because the more I sew I seem to gain in competence and confidence.

Join me next month to see how I get on with the next mystery block, and check out my previous posts for my mystery block quilt or the charity quilts made from the test blocks.

Eat the City

* I was invited to the press preview of Gardeners’ World Live and provided with a pair of tickets to visit the show, therefore all my posts will be marked as 'Ad’ though as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

I’m sure it’s no surprise by now but gardens that feature edibles and flowers together always get my vote, and when the garden’s also called ‘Eat the City’ then it’s also got my attention. This garden, designed by Phoebe Walsh-Gamgee is inspired by the urban environment and puts into practice the edible-ornamental approach along with companion planting to create a beautiful space for both the community and the wildlife.

I did like the central feature which spiralled through the garden providing a focal point and a place for planting - and the succulents growing vertically out of one of the spaces between the planks was a nice touch. It was also good to speak to the designer, who had clearly been working hard to get the garden together. Saying that I liked how some of the succulents had escaped raised a bit of a panic as they weren’t supposed to be falling out - oops. But as I said only she knew that, and not even the judges who were due imminently would know for sure, but I did leave her to fix it. I can’t imagine the stress of putting such a garden together, and to be honest, I’m not sure I ever want to try that.

The show notes included something quite profound, but also so very true:

A neighbourhood, a city, a community, and a garden share the same habits - they must grow. You cannot build a neighbourhood any more than you can build a tree; you can only create the right conditions, plant the seed, care for it and wait.

Isn’t it a great little garden?

This is the last show garden that I’m planning to share from the 2024 show, it won’t be long before this year’s show opens and I for one can’t wait.

* With thanks to Gardeners’ World for inviting me to Gardeners’ World Live, it was just as good as I expected! I’ve shared more from my visit to the show - I hope you enjoy it as much as I have, this is the last garden I’m sharing from the 2024 show - it’s not long now until this year’s show, and I’m looking for to seeing what’s in store this year.

Post Comment Love 23 - 26 May

Hello there, and 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.

We had a couple of days in Devon last week, and thankfully we continued to have nice weather. As ever in our quest to avoid motorway service stations wherever possible we made use of our National Trust membership stopping at Croome in Worcestershire both on the way down and on the way back.

It’s a fabulous place and in our two relatively short stops we managed to visit the cafe (twice), the RAF museum and head off in walks in opposite directions around the parkland to make sure we saw as much as possible. We didn’t make it into the house, or coincide our visit so that the walled gardens were open, but I’m sure we’ll be back.

And sadly, we didn’t have time to make proper use of these deck chairs either - so we’ll have to go back!

We’ve another bank holiday here in the UK this weekend, so the link party will stay open for an extra day closing at 11pm on Monday.