New starts

I know it has been ages since I blogged. In these intervening months my life has been turned around on it's head and I am just getting my bearings back.
From living a life of solitude on a six and a half acre mango orchard to living amidst hundreds of people who make it their business to chat you up, from doing housework, cooking, gardening to letting others do them all for you, life has indeed changed. I will not say for the better or for worse because there is nothing to compare. Life has just changed. Though right now I have space constraints and cannot take up quilting on the same scale as before, I have already done a block for Esther Liu's BOM - the Queen's garden and also made myself a mobile sling bag.
                  Oh and having something finished came in handy. Invited to a house warming I found this pair of cushion covers a great gift.

Snug as a bug in a rug

An affinity for bugs is not something to boast about but if it is a fact then you cant but state it. Be it inside or out in the garden, the creepy-crawlies find their way down my back or up my jeans making me leap like a startled fawn as Wodehouse would put it. But this post is about another kind of bug that is making the rounds in my house and I am having an attack of the bug right now! Yeah after crochet bug came the cross-stitch bug and now it is the quilt bug. Tired of blankets that fell short – they would either cover the feet or the face but never both – I decided to customise one for dh and thus was born this pieced quilt. 

The patch-work almost made me give up on it – my hands started locking up cutting all the pieces and I put it away for a year before bringing myself to piece it all together. Then came the quilting. I was too nervous to machine-quilt it and so I hand-quilted sitting for hours with the quilt spread on my bed . It was worth the effort and like Linus and his blanket it has become inseparable from its owner. I put it away only when the heat of the summer sun makes it impossible to use.

                                    A close-up of the patch-work and the quilting

The experience of making my first quilt gave me the courage to make one for Sid who needed it for the winters of Boston.  This was a themed quilt, reflecting the atmosphere of a farm with a morning and a night side. This time I spent hours painting the quilt, thankfully there was no piecing involved. It was a unique, one of a kind quilt and found favour with its youthful owner.

                                                A day in the farm

                                                                                        Night on the farm
 Now truly bitten by the bug I did this sampler quilt from an online class at Craftsy.com and the more I saw what people were coming up with the more I wanted to make quilts. 

That one took a year as the class spanned all of 2012 but I finished this last month for the newest member of the family. It features the traditional Greek Cross and looks bright and colourful – just right for a child.

                                                                         The front

                                                                                               And the back
And the awesome news is the quilt top I am working on now is being bought by someone. I decided a while ago that it was time to peddle my wares and have got my first custom order. A happy ending or rather beginning to my bug story.

                                               Just Squares
So now you know where to go or rather come when you want your child to be as snug as a bug in a rug. With air conditioning the rule rather than an exception, your child is going to need a quilt to keep warm. And you can get them custom made!
I will post pictures of the other kids' stuff that I craft in between my quilts in my next post