Every Now And Again...

I make a Useful Quilt, no art involved, really, for the back of a sofa or the wrapping of a baby... this is one such, made for a friend's newly-arrived grandson.  I can show it to you now, as it was collected yesterday.  It's by no means the best thing I ever made, but, as my granny would have said, it'll do a turn.

It's about 36" square.  The centre blocks are African fabrics, bought a year ago for no particular purpose... I had thought about making a book with them, but this seemed an altogether better thing to do. The green was the only fabric I could find that sat reasonably well with  those strong colours, while the surrounding fabric is almost jungle-like, and seemed appropriate.   I like making for babies...I think that commercially made things are either too big or too small to be truly useful. This, though, is roughly the right size for spreading on the floor, or the grass, for tucking a snoozing small child into, on the sofa, or the floor for that matter, for a trip out to the car on a cold, damp day. 

What I did discover, however, while making it, is that this size is too big for me to handle now.  I suppose it's a measure of the deterioration in my health over the last year.  I had no problem a year or so ago with Jessie's Japanese Garden, which was quite a bit bigger (see it here).  It is what it is.  I've just torn up a pile of A4 sized white fabric, to monoprint; I think that's about what I can cope with now.  Not entirely sure what I'll do with the two other quilt tops I talked about in the Japanese Garden post...perhaps hand stitching is a possibility.  We do what we can.