It’s a cool morning here, which is such a relief from the hot days we’ve been having. Our sky is shrouded in forest fire smoke today, though I can’t smell it. I sat on the deck and finished repairing this quilt, which is my absolute favourite in the whole world! 🙂

I have probably spent five hours on this over three days, adding a little reinforcing hand-stitching and appliquéing some new patches over the really worn ones. I made this in 2003, after 6 years of frenzied quilting. I had lots of scraps which lent themselves perfectly to these nine-patch blocks. One thousand six hundred and twenty squares in all.

When it was hot off the sewing machine, the colours were so much brighter. This quilt has been used at all our park/beach days, so the sun has faded its colours. But I love the way that as it’s aged, it just looks better and better (bit like me, HA).

Above you can see I repaired two blocks with the pansy fabric and the white/spotty fabric.

The block above left just needed the centre patch replaced, and the one on the right has a new sun.

This one needed radical patching too.

I only patched the centre, but there’s a lot of messy stitches holding the other black squares together. This one will need more work soon.

And finally, TA DA, the Ho’oponopono shawl. Otherwise known as my Good Karma shawl, or just plain prayer shawl. It’s about 60 inches long and 22 inches wide. Knitted with James C Brett Marble Chunky and size 11/8mm needles. I’m going to give this to my friend Anne, who has had inflammatory breast cancer for two and a half years. Her health has gone up and down since her diagnosis, she’s tried various cures from allopathic to alternative, and she’s currently on morphine and steroids which are helping with the inflammation and pain. We’ve been friends for 11 years, having met through the homeschool support group. Despite the heat, I hope she will get some use from the shawl.