I have come to the conclusion that I have........

................the attention span of a butterfly





A couple of years ago - or maybe more - I set the ladies in my Monday morning quilting group a challenge.





We were all to make an 'Ostrich Quilt' - in essence a bit like a Round Robin but flightless, ie it stays at home with you and you only work on your own





I have a history of enjoying making medallion style quilts with a centre and lots of rounds working out from the middle - I love the style but they do have one drawback.....





they tend to grow to gargantuan proportions.





So this time I took the conscious decision to work through the stages of my own Ostrich in a row style fashion





Each time I set a criteria for a stage I would make a row to add to the bottom of my quilt - that way it would stay at a set width and hopefully not get too big





The stages I set were: Stars, Circles, Squares/Nine Patch, Biased Tubing Applique, Flowers, Opposites and finally Triangles. I deliberately made the criteria fairly general and vague so people could work it to their strengths or challenge their weaknesses if they wished.


As you can see from the photo here I managed to get the first six rows done and stitched together with separating strips between them and then I lost impetus





Hence this WIP has been buried in the detritus of my sewing room waiting for its final Triangle row - I ran out of steam and couldn't think what to do at the time so it languished unloved until I resurrected it during The Grand Sewing Room Clearup





I looked at it a few times and then decided that flying geese are triangles so I would use four in each 6" block as my way of interpreting the criteria

Here's the first of the seven required blocks





I have to admit that I completed the row and added it. I then put on the final sand coloured bar below it and finished off the heart and leaf applique on each bar. Finally I added sand side bars ready to add borders to complete the top





And that's where my butterfly attention span stalled so I parcelled it up back into its labelled bag and returned it to the cupboard - before remembering to take a picture!





When it eventually comes out to play sometime in the future I shall take a picture to show you





So what did the butterfly attention span rest on next?





A very old UFO which has to be more than 6 years old as I can only remember working on it at our previous house in Gloucester and we moved to this house 6 years ago last Friday





I've never shown this on my blog before - its a medallion style quilt in mid blue, sand and cream

But here's a little taster of the area I'm working on at present - lots of bias tubing to form some celtic knotwork.





I haven't done any of this for a long while but I now remember how much I love it - look out Kate - you never know there may be some progress on that quilt top of yours I have yet