The Very Orange Quilt

Enough to brighten anyone's day! The orange quilt is finished. It is made of 30 pinwheel patchwork blocks, and the gear wheels were very carefully cut from felt.  As you can see, it is heavily quilted, so the gear wheels stand out. The final size is about 20 x 24 inches. 

Moorhen Chick

The moorhens have just one fluffy little chick and luckily they are frequently on our bank.  

At the opposite end of the size scale is this heron which was strutting its stuff on a diving platform on a boat opposite us.  Then it had a scratch and didn't look quite so composed!

Pigeon Pics

I enjoyed watching the pigeons tend their nest and the little chick hatch out and grow. After leaving the nest, it hung around the garden for a few days, and the parents came back to visit it.

Here it is quite fluffy, looking worriedly out of the nest, the first time the parents left it alone. 

Looking a bit tatty round the edges here. It grew quickly and was soon stretching its wings.

A few days after leaving the nest, it was back with one of the adults. They spent a while sitting together and hopping round the patio.

Grey Wagtail

The little grey wagtail is finished!  I am pleased with the result of using the tambour needle for the background and will certainly be using it again.   

Catching Up

I've been busy stitching my grey wagtail and realised I haven't posted any progress reports. 

So here is the little grey wagtail from a design based on my painting in the previous post.  The background is chain-stitch created with the tambour needle and now I've had some practise I can work at a reasonable pace with it.  The bird is being stitched in a mixture of stem stitch and long & short stitch for the areas which need a colour change.  

I've also been doing a bit of drawing and here is a pencil drawing of St Marks from a photo I took sometime ago.  

The photos below were taken during May.

An early morning photo of canada geese on the reservoir.

A swallow watches as another lands on the rail next to it.  

The last 3 pictures show a moorhen looking for a place to nest.  It decided against this tyre in favour of somewhere more spacious!

Birds

After enjoying painting the hare I decided to paint a grey wagtail from a photo I took in Norfolk when we were cruising.  My first painting was a straighforward depiction of the little bird which was standing on an underwater rock.  

My second painting was very different and was a bit of an experiment with the shades of grey which I don't use very often.  The greys were all a mix of burnt sienna and ultramarine.  

My other birds are photos starting with a heron standing on the reservoir bank when we were out last week.  

A little reed bunting that I took yesterday while we were out on the canal.  

A chaffinch on the path during our morning walk, the girls were very restrained in keeping their distance while I took the photo!

Pigeon Post

Here's one of the resident pigeons, well hidden among the leaves. The pair have been swapping over nest duty for about a week now, so probably another week or so to wait.

I've been working on a woodland theme, without too much of a plan. This little patch was woven to start with, but then I just kept adding bits I liked. At the moment all the edges are raw - the pieces are kept in place with very tiny backstitches. I'll probably oversew the edges by hand with embroidery silk.

Some more work on the woodlands theme. Once again, none of these patches have been finished off because I haven't figured out how I want to join them yet. The pale woven bits make a nice contrast to the bright blues, greens and oranges. At the moment, all the patches are spread out on my sitting room table, so I can fiddle them about into new combinations whenever the mood takes me.