Blame it on the scissors and the poppies!

 Of necessity this will be a post short on words and as the saying goes
'a picture says a thousand words'

yes, a real bad case of tendonitis, the worst I have ever had!

Due to my deciding that I didn't want tulips in the centre of my
AHIQ String Tulip QAL I hunted for favourite fabrics and decided on
Poppy Garden  by
Philip Jacobs, a snippet below

as you can see the frilled edges of the poppies are so pretty and
after deciding I should like a central collage within my string squares
 I had a moment of inspiration, why not carefully cut
around a few individual flowers for the collage. Out came my very
special tiny, sharp scissors and I began and rather overestimated how
long cutting into those frills would take, the result you can see in the first
photo of this post!

Here is the posy before ironing and fusing down using Misty Fuse.

Just as I had envisaged - a posy of poppies
set into the surrounding string squares although the purple
colour is slightly off in the photo
above.

just a border needed now and if I ice my hand regularly I'm hoping I

can have that done in two or three days.

As I was finishing the posy I checked on the Caring Bridge site for

news of Debbie from Stitchin'Therapy and learned that she had passed away

just 10 hours earlier. I had followed her blog since 2013 and we had exchanged
many emails  during that time, she battled for the past few years with many health challenges 

and with great courage, she will be sadly missed.

On that note here is a peaceful scene taken down at the beach yesterday

the sea just sparkled, it was beautiful and I think the seagull
under the bench was enjoying the view.

PS more words than I had thought!

Maureen

Progress at last

 Two works in progress in the post today.

Green Diamonds is almost at the finish line, here's a photo taken
yesterday and only a few more diagonals to go now.

The left hand piece is stitched, the right hand side is still in two section with one more strip
ready for  joining, only a few more rows to go  and fingers crossed they will be completed today.
I have to say that I am disappointed in that even with the greatest care and a little starching some of the bias edges have stretched a little, I can live with that
but I wouldn't make another diamond quilt, certainly not with these small size ones.

On to the String Tulip Quilt Along and
my outer strip blocks are all finished

and the next step is to work on the centre.
As you can see above we have the word Tulips in the prompt from 
Ann

you  can read the post from the first month of the QAL there.
Ann did say that we could change up a little, different flowers in the centre
not necessarily tulips so I'm going with the something a little different,
making a start on cutting out below.

There's also the cutting of fabrics for a new piece, more
about that in the next post but just a peek below

these have been in my stash for some time.

In the garden, even though we're in Autumn, we still have a few
blooms, Bergenia is one still flowering.

Hope you all had a Happy Easter!

Maureen