Home Wall Hanging

I spent last weekend with my extended family celebrating my niece, Sarah’s, 40th birthday (I was very young when I became an aunt BTW!) at her amazing party.

Of course I left it till the last minute to make her a present. Obviously she has already had a quilt from me (21st birthday) and numerous cushions. So what could I make her (with just a couple of days to spare!)?

I had an idea that she might like a patchwork table runner (well who wouldn’t?!) as she has just had a new kitchen/dining extension. And I had another, slightly crazy, idea that I could make one from my vast stock of orphan blocks and class samples!

With my usual optimism I selected some likely pieces and set to work joining them up. I was having a great time but after a couple of hours I really just had some larger orphan blocks, with nothing ‘hanging together’. I asked my hubby what he thought and he told me honestly that it looked terrible, but…

… he really liked this bit above with the word ‘home’.

So with time now even shorter I decided that what Sarah really wanted was a lovely wall hanging for her new kitchen! But it needed a bit more work to make it special enough. So I added some panels either side and started appliqueing stems and leaves (I am totally addicted to applique at the moment)!

(By the way, I made that word ‘home’ as a sample piece when we did our Stitch Gathering ‘word tickets’ two years ago. But then I lost it somewhere and had to make another one! Of course I found it at the bottom of a bag a few months later (this happens to me all the time and if you saw the state of my sewing room you would understand why!))

Anyway Sarah seemed to genuinely love it and the colours where perfect with her new interior scheme – yay!