Brightening up the bathroom

My husband and I like to have visitors for meals usually about once a month.  We find it's such a great way to get to know people better by sharing a couple of hours together around the table.  We have found it's a quick means of establishing lovely friendships when you move into a new area.

Having people to your home will often mean they will need to use the bathroom. My solution to the difficulty of people remembering the instructions "to go through the hallway, turn right and then go straight ahead" is this sign:

The sign is on our Toilet door and I have found it gives people confidence that they can open the door and know that they will be in the right room! 

I still had quite a bit of this lovely fabric left over from my "Consider the Lilies" quilt, so made up another sign for a separate bathroom, plus a soap pouch and a bucket.

You can find the Bella Bathroom set pattern in the latest edition of Patchwork & Stitching magazine, Vol 14, No 1:

 It's an inexpensive way to put some colour in the bathroom:

For quite a few weeks, I have been working on a Bed Runner.  It has turned out a very big project - much bigger than it was originally going to be!  The piecing was done very quickly, but then I decided to make some three-dimensional flowers for it.  It seems to take me a night to get one completed and that doesn't count actually attaching them, and there are seven to make!  I'm on the homeward straight with five finished and only two to go ... unless I decide to make another one for a matching cushion!  Then each flower has four needle-turn applique leaves, not my usual applique method, so I'm slow at that too.

Then there is the quilting!  Anyone who knows me even just a little bit, knows that machine quilting and I are not the best of friends.  I do as little as I possibly can get away with on my projects.  But this Bed Runner needs it.  Lots of it!  My plan of action has been to do a small amount each day, rather than tackling it all in one go.  I decided I could cope with it in small doses and the results might be better if I adopt a slow approach! So far, this plan of attack seems to be producing better results than I usually obtain:

I've done mostly geometric quilting so far, but next week I tackle the free motion lot - my biggest challenge!

In between working on the bed runner, I've managed to get some more of my 2012 patterns prepared for the website.

If you love simple silk-ribbon embroidery, you can find this embroidered fan pattern, Fan-ciful on my wall-hanging page.

Les Macarons is on the same page.

I love the colours in this little project:

Lilac Love sewing set has a number of different techniques, combining felt and fabric, inset applique, embroidery, twisted cord and tassel.  You can find it here:

After working on my bed-runner so much, I'm hankering after some 'real' needle and thread work so I hope to get some embroidery done on a Christmas project this week.

Till next time,

Happy stitching!

Val