A finished project for a friend's January birthday

Way back in the summer my long time and lovely friend, Amanda, showed us the feature wallpaper in their newly decorated bedroom.

Called 'Cherry Blossom' by the PIP Design Studio, she had fallen in love with it before she realised how difficult it was going to be to tone with bedclothes and soft furnishings. We stood looking at a blank space on the wall above a chest of drawers that just cried out to have 'something'. We talked about how some small pieces of the paper could be framed and then I said, 'Give me a piece of the paper and we'll see......'

Move on to our trip to stay in Bromyard and I spent a good hour and more with the brilliant Ruth Doughty of Doughty's of Hereford, who helped me match/tone both the gold/yellow and the two shades of each of pink, blue and green that appear in the pattern. 

I looked at all the patterns I had for inspiration and decided that Checkerboard (Farmer's Wife) didn't look too complicated - little did I know that Debs would later classify it as one of the 'fiendish' blocks when we started the class. But Debs scaled the original up for me to a 12" block, which was still fiddly but more manageable and the result turned out to be quite pleasing. 

Graham, who is becoming a willing supporter of my patchwork addiction, took the patterns of the garland, butterfly and two sizes of flower and made me cardboard quilting templates and I hand quilted the surface all over randomly with the different patterns using variegated shades of Perle Cotton in pink, blue green and yellow. You'll probably need to enlarge the picture to see the quilt detail.

After a bit of discussion with those of my buddies who know better than me, I put a sleeve on the back through which a dowel rod will go in due course and after a bit of debate I hand wrote a label using a permanent pen in my usual trademark Mrs Everything a Little Bit Wonky Style!

Amanda's birthday isn't actually until the end of the month but I do hope she will like the finished hanging. She does know that there is 'something' in the pipeline because she caught me looking at the blank wall in the bedroom during one visit when I had supposedly gone up to use the bathroom!!

Happy sewing!!