Carrying Further On...

...while boxing, yesterday, I collected all the UFOs in a heap.  I knew that there was one pieced top...but in fact, it turned out that there were two.  One is really quite small, and manageable, the other is lap sized, well, okay, small lap sized.  Both need a damn good iron...but that's not surprising given they have been hanging around for several years.  Here's the first one...

It's made entirely from hand dyed scrap...I rather like it.  It doesn't photograph all that well, and in honesty, I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with it now... but I dare say I'll think of something.  It wants some white in the lower right hand quadrant, at least, if not throughout the lower section, just to balance it up... I feel some evolon applique coming on.  Or perhaps some couched thread or needlefelting.  The ideal thing would be to add another narrow section at the bottom, but I don't think I have any suitable fabric for that, so perhaps not.  I'll have a look, though, because that would work well.  I have a load of fabric for dyeing, but not enough energy to dye...but I dare say I could manage to print a piece using fabric paints or acrylics.  Problem solved...once I've actually got the studio in some semblance of order.

The second piece seemed a bit more problematic, albeit not from a construction point of view.

If I remember rightly, it was meant as a gift, to go on the back of a sofa....it's big enough for Cara, our granddaughter, to snuggle on the sofa with, or for me to cover my legs with, but by no means big enough for a bed.  I rather like it.  It has random cats throughout, my favourite being the one at the bottom right of the quilt, he's a beauty.  So what's the problem?  Well, really, it's a size thing.  Partly, I don't think it's big enough to be truly useful, though that could be corrected by adding another border.  Mostly though, even although it's not all that big, my heart sank when I thought about quilting it.  That said, I quilted a piece that was not a great deal smaller than this one, as an eightieth birthday present for my sister's mother in law, a lovely lady with a passion for textiles.

Here it is, called 'Jessie's Japanese Garden', all tacked up ready to quilt.  And for the sake of completeness, a couple of details.

This is narrower, and, I suspect, slightly shorter, but really, there isn't all that much difference.  Perhaps I can cope after all.  Or maybe I could give it to a long arm quilter to finish for me... but that always feels like cheating...okay, so I'm a control freak.  What's truly interesting, though, is how well it matches my living room.  I now have lilac sofas; the quilt fits in the general decor as if it had been made for it.  So one way or another, that particular quilt is going to be finished.  So much for working small.