Slow stitching Sunday.

This weekend John and I have been away and we had a great time. The reason for our trip was to celebrate my birthday which is today and part of that celebration was to visit my favourite quilt shop, Midsomer Quilting. I've shown you pictures of the shop before but what I haven't told you about is their mini challenge.  For several years now they have run a 12 x 12 inches challenge based on a given theme. Through December they exhibit the mini quilts and then many of them are put up to be auctioned in aid of Dorothy House which is a hospice in the local area. We were lucky enough to be visiting during the exhibition and I took a few photos to show you. I have put the quilt first and then the information about it. The theme was 'One day...'   

I loved this one of a swallow

This one caught my eye because we plan to do this walk next year.

Some of the quilts had three D aspects to them. I really liked this lily.

and the frog was getting a lot of attention.

Quite a few of the quilters had interpreted the theme through nature.

This poem is quite fun and I love the purple cow.

The owl had many admirers.

This one reminded me of the Very Hungry Caterpillar book that my children loved when they were little.

When we saw this one we both thought of Solzhenitsyn and then we read the label.

They were also having a raffle and the first prize is this piece, The twelve days of Christmas. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of the artist.

The second prize is a larger version of one of the blocks from this quilt. Unfortunately the position where this quilt was displayed made it impossible to get a picture of the whole quilt.

I spent some time choosing fabric, thread and notions. This was my birthday present from John.. We got into a lively conversation with a group of women and somehow it led to everyone in the shop singing happy birthday to me. It was most embarrassing but also really nice at the same time.

We went into Bath in the afternoon and did a little Christmas shopping. It was very crowded as the Christmas market was on so we didn't stay long. We headed back to our hotel at about 5 p.m and we spent the time until dinner in our room with John having a nap and me stitching hexagons . I'm currently prepping white hexagons to complete the latest round. I've lost count of how many I need but with 6 for every flower it comes to lots. This is what I'm working on this evening. On this round all the outer hexagons are white and only the centre one is a colour. Since taking this photo I've added some more flowers.

Today we visited Avebury and walked round the ring. I'll tell you about that in the near future. For now I'm linking this post with Kathy from Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching If you like hand stitching pop over and see what's being worked on this week.

Now since all the coloured centres are made let me work out just how many white hexagons I need to get this round finished. Mmm I think I might need a calculator as I haven't got enough fingers for this job.

Do come back tomorrow as I'm having a birthday give away. 

Lyndsey