Bloggers' Quilt Festival, Autumn 2011

I am very late but, finally, here is my contribution to Amy's "Bloggers' Quilt Festival". The festival ends tomorrow but there will still be time to look at all the wonderful quilts.  I couldn't consider not taking part, even though I have been delayed by all kinds of things (including DH's germs), as it was Amy's BQF that got me started with this blog and as I am fast approaching my 500th post it seems fitting that this entry should kickstart the celebrations. 
So, which quilt to share?  Well, I have already posted about this quilt but it is one of my favourites and also one of my most recently completed so here is "Round and Round the Nara Gardens":

I couldn't manage to get a very square photograph of it but these are better than the original one I posted:

As you can see this quilt is made in Japanese-style fabrics (Nara Gardens) and I'm not sure the photos show it but I have tie-quilted it with a lovely green cotton thread.  This quilt lives on my guest bed and has been promised to several guests to sleep beneath but it didn't get finished in time.  You can't rush a good thing can you and it will be here for their next visits!  The design is a simple combination of Snowball and Framed Square blocks which I first made on a workshop with Jane Bottamley and I have used the pattern several times.  I wanted to make a Japanese version as soon as I saw the trellis effect that the combination of the blocks creates.
Thank you Amy for organising another great BQF, I'm off to look at more of the wonderful entries.

Non-Fabric Loveliness

I went on a bit of a spending spree today but in the local garden centre and also the big orange warehouse place rather than in the LQS.  This is what I came home with

all that promise and the excitement of creation and things to come, not dissimilar from buying fabric really.

On the quilting front I had a long session with the rotary cutter yesterday, starting to cut for my "Round and Round Nara Gardens" (working title) quilt and then discovered to my dismay that I have insufficient of the Nara Gardens fabric.  Derrr!  Better go to the LQS after all :)  Does anyone else find that however carefully they do the fabric calculations there's always either something short or a lot leftover?  Maybe I'm buying in metres and calculating in feet or something! 
On the positive side I did use a new rotary blade and a new machine needle when I started piecing, bliss.  This is my rather late new year resolution, to always use a new blade and needle for a new project, it was like the proverbial knife through butter.  Oh, sadness, I've given up butter for Lent and now I've thought about it and could just eat a fat slice of hot buttered toast!  Okay, time to stop rambling and draw a plan of where those lovely flowers are going to burst into life in my garden.