ANOTHER QUILT TOP FINISHED

Another quilt top finished - and put on one side until (much) later. It was put up on my design wall this way so I tend to think of it as the right-way-up

but it can also be viewed like this. Same photo, you'll realise from the shadow, just turned one turn to alter the orientation. As usual it's made from new/recycled material garnered from friends, charity shops and, recently, car boots. I've found a way of getting round without stressing myself too much. The cream material used for the sashing, that is, the frames of each 5 1/2" square, was a car boot buy, a single duvet cover. Plenty of material and long straight cuts possible.
There are all kinds of things to spot, especially if you're asking a young child to find some of these things: a bird,

or a fish (this material has been in several quilts and I still have l-o-a-d-s left...),
or a tiger who has a turquoise face and wings!
There are sunflowers, too, lots of them because yellow is a good colour to have in a quilt,
And oranges, too - it's the 'hot' colours which make a quilt ping!

In a charity shop I bought a new cotton skirt which has a black background with bright colours and bands of different designs, like this zigzag. Apart from this pattern there are also stripes, plaids,checks and spots. I have a thing about spotty material!
The piece of white flowered material came as part of my last year's Christmas present from Sarah. She gave me 6 fat quarters and they've been useful to put into quilts. A Fat Quarter is a quarter of a yard of 44" wide material but instead of being cut as a long, narrow strip across the whole width it's cut as a piece half way across the width and twice the depth to make a chunky piece measuring 18" x 22". More puzzled now?

There are dandelions, too, stars (of different sizes) as you can see with the oranges, plenty of flowers, some ears of corn, a few hearts and holly leaves and just two cherries... Here and there are some Christmas scraps.

I don't intend to quilt it just now, I'm saving that for the dark days when I can keep my hands warm underneath the magnifying lamp, but while the light is still good-ish I'm going to keep machining. I've gone back to what I was doing some months ago in conjunction with this strippy quilt's blocks, random log cabin-y squares, unless I go back to making more story book houses....

One of my great-granddaughters has just gone off to Uni to study (so my daughter told me) forensic science - don't ask where all that science ability came from, definitely not my side of the family! But the pleasing thing is she's taken her Spotty Nightime Cats quilt with her and that was made about 10 years ago together with another in the same pattern and materials when the two sisters moved into a new house. The quilts are used as snuggle comforters and in the summer when you need just a light covering. Another duvet cover made the backs for these so identical quilts, just the cats and the moon in different places. Ah! The days when I could manage 'long' quilts.