Well, I failed to update in March and now it is mid-April…. I simply don’t know where the time goes. Last week I came home after two wonderful weeks walking in Madeira, wind, rain and clouds were high on the menu although we began and ended with a few days of sunshine. It is a very green volcanic island with plenty of up and down with some tunnels thrown in. Although early in the season there were flowers and the most wonderful forests, sadly the best day for trees was so wet that I left the camera at the hotel but I came home full of ideas!

During March I had work in a local art exhibition which seems to have been well received.

On the stitch front it doesn’t seem that I have achieved much, I finished a new piece which was designed to be mounted on a canvas except that the stitching reduced the size radically so that plan went out of the window, despite leaving a good margin of error.

The March Fifteen by Fifteen piece, the second ‘books’ was completed. This time I chose Wind in the Willows which I love, more for the memories of pantomime (Toad of Toad Hall) which was a family favourite than the book. The opening chapter is about the mole discovering the wonders of the river bank with the water rat, I just love the idea of the animals exploring new territories. It is virtually all machine stitched.

My March journal quilt was also completed, the forest with hidden squirrels. I really enjoy doing the monthly journal quilts as they give me the excuse to play around with different ideas. The hidden element is the quilting of the squirrel forms.

My next book piece is on the table and my April journal quilt has been to Madeira and back and hasn’t been touched and plenty of other ideas are swimming around in my head. This week with the sunshine the garden rather took up all my time, with all the rain everything has grown and the weeds had taken over, the lawn took two cuts to make it look anything like a lawn.