Isle of Man Patchwork

My friend gave me a patchwork cushion cover kit as a gift that she bought while on holiday on the Isle of Man. Apparently the women on the Isle of Man used this pattern in olden times to make full size quilts, they tore strips from discarded clothing etc and hand sewed the strips to a backing in this log-cabin pattern. The strips are each turned back leaving a pleat so the result is a quilt that doesn't need backing or padding and it hid the big stitches they used. That's what it says on the packet anyway. I'm not doing it strictly to the pattern, there should be four log-cabin squares but I'm just doing the one and adding Christmassy strips round the edge, that way I'll get four cushion covers from the kit. I have finished it now and it's all ready to join my other Christmas patchwork cushions on the settee over Christmas.

Cards

Since Friday I've spent time in my craft room making Christmas cards, it's been a while since I made a batch of cards and it always takes me a few goes before I'm happy with what I produce. The first few I made are quite horrible! Anyway, I've got a good selection made so far, about 15 I think. These in the picture are very easy - I just used my scoring board to create a frame, cut out pictures from a pad of Dovecraft Designer Paper Pack, added peel-off lines that I coloured with a permanent marker from docrafts and glued star gems to the corners, all bought from the Nottingham branch of The Range.

Crazy Quilting

I have a swapping friend called Lori who sent me a CQ patch as an extra on our last swap. Lori does the most amazing decoration on her patches and when I received one from her I immediately saw it as a centre for a cushion cover. It turned out beautifully, I'm so happy that Lori thought to send this to me. I've never done any crazy quilting, just conventional patchwork, all my cushions in my sitting room are patchwork and now I have this lovely new cushion to show off to my visitors!