Naughts and crosses

This week has passed by in a cloud of germs that were not conducive to anything more productive than sleeping. I have a pile of deadline sewing that is screaming at me from the sewing room but that door will remain firmly shut for a little while longer. Despite having nothing recent to show you I can share some sewing that I did a lot earlier this year :)
When Denyse Schmidt released her Ansonia collection I couldn't wait to get busy with it. I played around with TouchDraw and came up with a simple but effective design to show it off - Granny Crosses. I used the pinks and blues from Ansonia along with black yarn dyed Essex linen as the background fabric and I love the way it looks. It just screams snuggly at me :)

The pattern for the quilt and cushion is available in Issue 3 of Quilt Now so I can't show the construction but it is a very simple, single block used in rotation which seems to be my trademark these days.

Issue 3 looks like this and you'll find lots of other lovely projects between the pages. The cover quilt is by the lovely Lynne!

Of course my Block of the Month is in there too. This month readers get the first hint of how the Medallion quilt will go together. It's been lovely to see some people sewing along with me - particularly Sarah and Yvonne :)

There's also the free project tutorial for this month's BOM, Wall Art, which is live on the Quilt Now website.

I've run out of steam, so for now I'm back to resting up ready to attack the sewing room tomorrow. I hope you're lurgy-free wherever you are. Catch you soon x

Sew Mama Sew Giveaway day

It's that time of year again! Sew Mama Sew are holding the first of their twice yearly giveaway days/weeks. We love a giveaway around here so we had to join in again :) With no firm idea of what we were going to offer up this time round I went to bed Saturday night with the seed of an idea...what would happen if I paired > with +...Strange but true! I woke up Sunday morning with the beginning of a plan and after much faffing around with paper, pencil and ruler I was ready to start making. I grabbed a stack of Japanese fabrics from Polka dot tea fabrics, a dash of Vintage Happy by Lori Holt, some precious Dream On from Moda and some luscious denim yarn dyed linen. With plenty of encouragement from the lovely gang on Instagram I've ended up with this:

We thought it would be nice to let the winner decide whether they would like this to be a cushion or a wall-hanging. It's going to finish up around 24" square! So to be in with a chance to win this (finished by me obviously!):
Please leave a comment here with a name suggestion for this pattern.
For a bonus chance to win, leave another comment to let us know if you are a follower, new or regular

The winner will be chosen by random number generator.

There will also be a small surprise gift for the best pattern name so get your thinking caps on :) If you check back on 17th May you might just find the templates for this design waiting for you, just saying ;)

The giveaway is open to everyone. The draw will close on Friday 16th May at 5pm PST but as we're in the UK and will be sound asleep at the equivalent 1am you might sneak in before I wake up on the 17th May.  So now all that's left for you to do is go visit some of the other fab giveaways.
Catch you soon x

Edited to add: Please excuse me if I don't manage to reply to all the comments on this giveaway post :)
Edited to add the winners are Catrin Lewis and Sarah@Sew Me.