Calendar Quilt – April

With the April block, I was going to be organised.
I started it in the third week of March and stitched the little girl with her spotty umbrella in place.
And then a dodgy upgrade took down my website and that took a few days of footering and nail biting before it was fixed. Then I got some exciting news (will tell you all when I can!!) and had to work on another project for a week or so. Easter happened next and all my kids were off.
The following week, it was the Middle One’s birthday so there wasn’t a mission that I was going to get time for sewing.
Last week my yearly contract was up and I decided to switch my web-hosting company and that involved more footering and more nail biting. So finally, today, a little over a month later, I got back to my little girl and her umbrella.

I added the rain drops falling into her outstretched hand and machine stitched in the handle of her umbrella. I sewed the teeny, little heart buttons onto her dress, egged on by the Little One who loves anything girly.

The snail was originally intended to be climbing up the bird table in February’s block but the Little One piped up with, ‘But, Mum, snails hibernate.’ The Little One reads non-stop and acquires all sorts of random information. ‘Do they?’ I was fascinated. I thought of hibernation as the premise of furry things, not garden SNAILS. ‘When do they wake up?’ I asked. ‘How would I know?’ said the Little One, and went back to her book.

So I googled it. And in the UK, it seems they usually come out of hibernation in April so I added a little snail slithering into the April block. You can just see the swirl marked in the circle of the shell, this will be quilted in later.

The details of the girl’s face were hand-embroidered in. I always secure the backs of French knots with a tiny piece of interfacing fused on as I think the knots are vulnerable to getting pulled.
The faint blue line at her chin will be quilted in to define the face.
I always worry that if a face is made out of a circle of fabric and stitched all the way around, it can end up looking bearded. Bearded children was not the look I was going for.
You can see how the quilted chins look in the dancing girls cushion.

It was April, so there had to be tulips. I just love Spring flowers, they look so joyful bursting out of the earth!
Quilting, I think, will really show this block in its best light. I will post before and after photos of the blocks once they have been quilted as the quilting is so integral to the design.

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