Christmas Picnic Blanket

Hello everyone, it's a lovely Autumn day here in the Bay of Islands, sunny, a little breeze and the promise of a chilly evening with a warm fire to enjoy!

I've been a little quiet lately - I've been busy organising my new computer.  I consider it housework and de-cluttering as I needed to do a lot of consolidating and getting rid of old documents and junk photos.  But now it's up and running and in it's proper place on my desk - so it will be back to the paper junk soon.

Yesterday I was at a little Saturday Stitch and Chat that we organised with our quilting club.  It was an attempt to get people along who can't come to our weekday meetings and perhaps interest some new members.  We had a couple of people who had never quilted before come along and they were so enthusiastic!  There was a 10 year old girl who I think I've converted to english paper piecing - she's going to come back next month and hopefully bring along a project.  How cool!

Anyway, I want to show what I've finished recently.  It's not particularly beautiful or complex but I'm hoping it will grow to be special.  My kids picked out these Christmas fabrics and this is a Christmas picnic blanket I've made out of them.

It's our tradition to go camping at Christmas time and so I don't feel I can break out the beautiful linens and table centres of a traditional Christmas dinner.  But I do believe Christmas is about traditions - the ones you make with your own family and I'm hoping this picnic blanket will be used and loved every summer and become associated with happy family memories.

I backed the top with a lovely old wool blanket and used no batting.  I left the old Mosgiel label on the blanket for a bit of history.  I free-motion quilted it all over with a holly leaf pattern.  And boy, did the woolly blanket fill up my machine with fluff!

Now isn't this pretty?  Totally fits my rustic shed/house.  I always check the specials when I'm in a garden centre - they often have flower punnets that are a bit overgrown.  These pansies and calendulas were $1 each and they've taken off and filled my blue fish-bin with green, little white pansy flowers peeking and hopefully lots of calendula flowers soon.  The nasturtiums are self-seeded.

And just for fun!  I was trying to take a pic of the backing I pieced for my turquoise and blue quilt - but gave up in the bright sun.  So you get a silly shot instead!  Have a great Sunday.

(oh, and if anyone can tell me how to resize photos on a Mac I'd be very grateful!)