Patchwork in the park

Born into a light

People, pack your wicker baskets with cucumber sarnies, cheese and pineapple on sticks, fizzy wine and the mini salt and pepper pots – we're having a picnic. Don't forget the corkscrew! How sweet would it be to head up to Hampstead Heath on a hot afternoon and lounge about on this work of art? Being extremely careful not to drop any crumbs, naturellement.

A patchwork quilt this size can take years to stitch by hand. Of course, you can cheat and use a machine to sew the pieces together, but it's a labour of love working out the design, deciding on fabrics and cutting out the shapes nevertheless.

Choosing from endless juxtapositions of colours is so satisfying and can get very addictive. Here's a section of one of mine in progress from a while ago (I'm resting my head on the cushion I made it into as we speak. Lovely):

I took the haphazard approach to design

But my mind literally boggles (if that is possible) at how much planning and work and care and time must have gone into the out-and-out feast for the eyes below, with its ding-dings of pinks and yellows among the various shades of green. And to photograph it lurking in the undergrowth, well that is, as they say, what I'm talking about.

Village green preservation society

Both of these outdoor delights I dug out of Patchwork & Appliqué (Marshall Cavendish, 1979), a veritable goldmine of, well – patchwork and appliqué projects:

Got some scraps of fabric to use up? Click here (and here and here) for the beginners' guide to patchwork. Make do and mend is the latest thing y'know.

Room for one more?

I'm definitely joining a quilting bee when I grow up.