Wet and windy weather has been replaced by frosty nights and calmer, sunny days; days you want to be outside.

This morning's crispy walk took us by a smallholding on the edge of town;

I was pleased to see that the long feathered geese made it past Christmas 😀

Little acknowledgement from the pony;

  

but the alpacas in their woolly winter coats couldn't be bothered to come and say hello this morning. 

 First snowdrops in the churchyard,

 and yellow aconites opening up in the park.

Back at home I finished a half of the leaf border on the Grandmother's Garden quilt. 

I am using a straight forward needleturn applique, which is quick and I feel most comfortable with.

I am rather addicted to this quilt at the moment, and I can't wait for the next stage, which will be a border of small log cabin blocks.

Those of you who follow Barbara Brackman's blog might have seen her interesting post on 16th January "Pattern Blocks", in which she writes about " orphan quilt blocks", and which have become very collectable. 

Some of them dating as far back as the start of 20th century, these were not quilt blocks to be part of any quilt, but to keep as a reference, a part of a quilt pattern library or to share a particular pattern with others. 

Therefore they were not necessarily well stitched, as their permanence wasn't the most important thing, and often they had to be unpicked and re-stitched, to be able to copy them over and over again. 

Today of course we can find a pattern for any block in many places, be it books, magazines or online.

In those days sharing a block with your friends in this way would had been the easiest way to get a new pattern.

And sharing is something which we quilters do so well, don't we!

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