Design Wall Monday

Trying hard to clear the to do's to make way for Christmas sewing, I managed to get this scrappy quilt top together from my leftovers of this applique one on the right.

Yes, I know Halloween isn't over yet and I normally try not to mention Christmas until 1st November but it's a bit of a list this year and I could use one or two of Santa's Elves helping out!

The 4.5" squares have been up on the wall for a few weeks with no change so this weekend I got to stitching them up.

On their own they were a little bit small so I added a border.  I tried a 4.5" border at first but it didn't work so an 8.5" border is what I went with in the end and now I'm thinking of hand stitching that too!  Fair warning though, apart from embroidery I'm not the most patient person for hand sewing!  The plan is to Sashiko stitch a different pattern in each of the blank squares.

I think I might be more excited by the scrappy leftover one than the Fat Quarter Fizz version above!

I've been choosing the Sashiko stitch patterns I want to use for the larger blank squares from a book Claire lent me a few weeks ago.

It's going to be hard to switch gears from Sashiko to Christmas sewing so I hope to get this basted up today and hopefully buy some orange, yellow and red thread at the Knitting & Stitching show in Dublin next weekend.  The plan is to do a bit here and there over the next few months.   I have to buy perle cotton for my Penny Sampler too so the shopping list is growing!

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