A BOM, a change of direction and a pincushion

The Amitie BOM carries on with two blocks to make each month.  This time I gritted my teeth and mastered hand piecing because some of these blocks are just too fiddly to make on the machine.  I've been using a mixture of the Amitie fabrics and my own and am kind of wondering whether that means I'll end up with something wonderful or just a right old mess.  So far, the six blocks are looking good together I think:

My husband bought me a Maison de Garance layer cake for Christmas.  I have to confess I am secretly a sucker for very traditional quilts and am designing a quilt to use for this layer cake with a very traditional look - three different stars all sort of interlinking.  The inspiration for this came from this chubby star quilt.  I've made two blocks so far and they're kind of a fuss and a fiddle to cut and piece but I like the look of the finished blocks - very old fashioned.  Two down, eight to go and lots more fuss and fiddle bits to make to hold the whole thing together and this is going to look perfect in our sitting room.

And finally my London sister asked for a pincushion for Christmas and because she lives in a house that looks like it comes from a magazine and is full of gorgeous items beautifully placed around about the place, I couldn't make her a pincushion out of just any old fabric - of course it had to be a Tufted Tweets Chesterfield sofa pincushion:

Well I will wish you all a happy new year because I probably won't have anything to blog about between now and then - unless I show you all the goodies I was given for Christmas, which I might just come back and do - if I tell you that my husband took the kids to my lovely LQS, Quintessential in Cromford, Derbyshire,  and my Mum and sister shopped at my other favourite fabric shop, Simply Solids, you can gather that I had a good stash of Christmas presents this year.