Stars and flowers

This year has been hard so far. I have been trying to be focussed and get creative and haven't managed to make it happen yet. The only making I've been able to do so far has been some patchwork that has been hanging around for a couple of years and weighing on my conscience. It is actually completely obsolete; I started making it as an extra cover for our bed on really cold nights, but we have since had double glazing put in and don't seem to have really cold nights any more. I started picking the fabrics for this just before my eldest started school - and he is now 8. Still, yesterday I finished the last of 21 stars. Want to see? Here you are...

The fabrics are all Kaffe Fassett ones; the vibrancy of the colours and the patterns is life-affirming (and I need a bit of that in the winter). I was wary of using such large patterns and chopping them up but Material Obsession 2 showed me that I needed to relax and enjoy the clash of it all. This one is my favourite - it may sound odd but I love the way the two patterns compete with each other and make your eyes jingle:-

Each block is made from 24 pieces, and each block is 12 inches square.. It is good to know that I'm now around half way through piecing the quilt (even though it's taken a good 2 years to get this far), but the other blocks that will go between these ones are just a mixture of two brown-toned fabrics so I know I won't feel the urgency to see them done in the same way as with these lovely bright stars. 

Positive things to focus on for some inspiration: a visit to a house balanced on a cliff in Portishead today with the most wonderful sea view, just nothing at all but sea, sky and a hint of Wales in between the two. Then oddly a visit to Windmill Hill City Farm yesterday. Usually parents are to be seen following their toddlers around there, loudly narrating "Yes, a goat, oh look chickens..." but my six-year-old has still not quite grown out of the place and never tires of it. And she's probably got good reason to love it: we always unwind there and there's always something to lighten our spirits. And yesterday it was a cute bit of yarn-bombing...

I'm really hoping these will be enough to get me inspired enough to do some more felting in the next week.  And if not, that I'll see some other things that help me get back on track...