September FNSI - All About the Patchwork

I joined with Wendy of Sugarlane Designs and friends around the world for this month's FNSI on, unsurprisingly, Friday night.

Having just driven 2 and a half hours home from work I thought I might be too tired for much of an FNSI but it turns out I have reserves of energy for crafting.

I started off working on a couple more blocks for my neutral scrappy Trip Around the World quilt...

and had a quick check that my planned layout would work...

This is for a king size bed and a rough calculation is that I will need 48 blocks to fit the bed - so this is going to be a long term project.

From sewing I moved onto cross stitch and my Mini Christmas Patchwork Sampler.

I'm making steady progress on this and there's a realistic chance of this being finished by Xmas (I even have a frame which might fit it).

And for the last bit of the evening I worked on the sixth square of my Cozy Memories blanket.

This is quite additictive and it's tempting to just make more squares but I'm trying to only use scraps from projects I have finished this year (and following years as this requires several more squares to become a blanket - currently its table mat size!).

If you want to see what everyone else got up to visit Wendy's blog or look up the FNSI Facebook group.

Newark Park and the unheralded quilt

 I'm currently on a stint of working away from home from Sunday night to Friday evening, so me and my partner/boyfriend/other half (not sure which term I prefer, probably should decide) are trying to make the most of the weekends.

Last weekend we paid a visit to nearby Newark Park (near Stroud and Tetbury), which is a National Trust property. Despite it's name there is a park, garden and house to visit.

It was a really interesting place - built as a tudor hunting lodge (though not visited by a Tudor monarch - I suspect not many of them were*), modified and extended several times and finally lived in by two Americans who restored the building on behalf of the National Trust and were living there to the early 2000s.

As well as beatiful location and views...

It was possible to see some of the original tudor structure, giving a feel for the original building; this was helped by a really interesting talk with a model of the house demonstrating the phases of the building.

It's not a massive property and very little of the contents are original to the house, and as such there is little explanation of the furniture etc.

One item did catch my eye...

This quilt was evidently random scraps of fabric...

Hand sewn onto a blanket. 

Maybe technically not a quilt as that generally sugests three layer of fabric but I'm not picky! Absolutely zero details about its history but interesting notheless.

If you're ever in the area I recommend a visit, and a walk in the grounds if you have time.

* The original builder's main property, Acton Court in Iron Acton, was visited by Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn - we haven't visited it (yet).