I finally made a start at the remaining activities for the current module that I’m working on for my C&G course. We had to make some templates for hexagon, triangle and diamond patches but that wasn’t so exciting. The next thing was to interpret a photo ready for English paper piecing. I had been keeping my eyes open for a suitable photo without much success. When I was back in England a photo that my brother-in-law had taken of a cygnet on the lake at Sheffield Park seemed to be asking to be used for this exercise.

First of all I had to pick out all the colours I could see in the photo:

Then I had to lay a grid over the photo and choose the dominant colour in each triangle and reproduce it in the plain grid. The grid is made by printing onto a piece of acetate which can be used on an overhead projector. That way you can play around with the placement to get the most advantageous one.

It was quite hard to choose which colour to use in some of the triangles.

I suppose I could have made the triangles smaller in the grid and still have sewn them larger when it came to the paper piecing. I only just thought of that as I am writing this post. Still the result I have is quite interesting too - even if you would never guess that there was a cygnet in there somewhere

2nd January 1922 - 24th March 2008

I wasn’t going to post about this, but having heard from some people who are wondering where I’d got to, I decided I’d better explain why I’ve not been around. My Dad died on Easter Monday. One of the most important lessons I learnt from him is to stay active both mentally and physically. He completed a degree in French and Spanish aged 79 in 2001:

This is one of my favourite photos from our childhood taken in 1957:

P.S. to Bernadette. If you are reading this - we’ve not received any emails from you. Add a comment if you have sent one.