July and August - a summer of applique

July was definitely my favourite month - the 'A' word - applique - yippee!

Mind you as is always the case it's difficult thinking of subject matter and I do recall pondering long and hard before the idea of these swirls with leaves and berries sprang to mind. The swirls are done in home made bias tubing - the same as I use for my celtic knotwork and then each leaf is popped on afterwards. I used a tea plate as the pattern for the curves and an English 5p for each of the pink berries










When it cam to August I think the organiser felt sorry for us after putting such an unpopular challenge as applique in for July (not for me of course but no-one else seemed too thrilled)

She suggested that as most of us would be holidaying in August that we could have 'Stripes' for that month's challenge. Some people did a piano key border others made shapes or blocks from striped fabric - I didn't know what on earth to do until I spotted a pinkish lilac bamboo hoffmann print on ebay. I bought it and cut it across the pieces of bamboo in narrow borders so it looked like stripes - easy and simple

However once I'd popped on the thin striped borders I felt that the deeper pink one between them and the July applique looked a little bare so decided to take it away on holiday to our holiday cottage with me and worked in the evenings for the whole fortnight stitching a trail of 'lilac pennies' meandering over the pink border the whole way round. I can't remember exactly but I think there are in excess of 200 of those pennies all stitched by hand with freezer paper on top. I do love applique and as you can imagine by the end could almost do those pennies blindfold. I recall feeling quite disappointed when I came to the end and felt in no way applique'd out.

So onto September and a house move hot on the heels ...........................