Before I go any further, can I ask you to pray for our Blossom...
Behind the scenes here at Elefantz HQ, our sweet Blossom has been in hospital.
She's now five months pregnant with her first child, and deliriously happy about becoming a mama.
But
her health has always been rather fragile, and right now her red blood
cells are very low so she's had to receive Haemoglobin through an IV.
She's also had some other blood issues and received two courses of blood
thinners.
After three days she was
allowed home and is now catching up on lost sleep (something hard to get
in hospital when you're being woken up every two hours for obs and
bloods and scans and tests), but she's still in need of more IVs over
the course of her pregnancy and a second heart scan in a few weeks.
Would you pray for her please?
Her
beloved, her daddy, and I, have been by her side doing what we can but
she'd love some refreshing energy to sew soft toys for her little girl
before the big day arrives, and also to potter around in their new home
setting up the nursery and generally being the homemaker her heart longs
to be.
Your prayers would mean the world to her. xxx
Between my Club stitching this month and trips to the hospital, I've also been putting together this simple new design, "4 Calling Birds" using a few of the beautiful fabrics Lecien sent me from their Flower Sugar Holiday prints.
After drawing up a three-part bird template I fussy cut sections from large print red and aqua fat quarters for the wing, breast and body sections, before fusing them one above the other down a long narrow piece of white linen...
I blanket stitch appliqued each section of the bird shapes with either Aqua or Red Perle #12 threads.
The next step was to make four 1" hexies. I chose to fussy cut them from an off white fat quarter so they'd give the finished appearance of floating around the birds.
After this I fused cotton quilt wadding/batting and backing fabric behind the linen to make a 'quilt sandwich'.
To quilt in a way that would compliment the design I drew three lines down the length of the linen with an erasable pen, then blind stitched the four hexies in place between the birds, sitting each one across an outside line.
Using the Aqua Perle thread I sewed along the lines with a running stitch, and then around the hexies with the Red Perle thread.
I also hand quilted with running stitch around each section of the applique birds.
The final steps were to trim the wall quilt to 8" x 26", make and attach the binding (I used the remainder of my red fat quarter), and sew two hanging ties (from the remainder of my aqua fat quarter) for display from a small metal hanger.
I think this little project turned out rather nicely!
Do you love stitching birds?
In the shop at the moment is the pattern to make my Sweet Tweet Quilt!
You'll find it here.
hugs
