A new start

A new project -  "In the time of Toile" quilt kit (by Froncie Quinn). I was very lucky winning this from Sue . Thanks so much to Sue for her generosity!
Just look at the lovely fabrics here...

I particularly like the red toile and the florals.  A couple of  small pieces of this line are already in my stash - which might come in handy for the quilt. But no more of the red toile. 

And this is the pattern:

To make a start I decided to fussy cut the toile to make the four  corner blocks around the centre . It is a large scale print with few repeats so was going to be tricky to select pieces to use. I wanted to have a bird in each corner. 

These "tools" were invaluable: a homemade template of the corner block and a packet of kebab sticks...

got you guessing?

I only had one template so the kebab sticks just marked possible placements before drawing/cutting - bit crude but it worked a treat: 

Only two large birds on the piece of fabric, and a few littlies

Next - the Applique basket :

I have substituted a different yellow for the base as the one in the pack is a little "muddy" for me. 

The red top of the basket (and flowers) is all one piece of fabric cut from the border print - very clever use of the fabric I thought - well done Froncie!

Basket cut from border fabric - ready to needle turn applique

Applique done

Next - Broderie Perse flowers and leaves:

I cut pieces out of the floral fabric and some of the individual flowers from the border print and dithered around with placement - fun to do but took a while. Then I tacked them down very roughly with large stitches :

Tacking stitch placement ready to applique

Bit of a tentative placement - might change a bit as I sew. There are 12 seperate pieces of fabric tacked on there so this could be fiddly with the needleturn applique! Wish me luck...