Wow what a year!

2022 was the year I sold my house, went on our extended holiday to South Korea which had been in the planning for two years and bought a house in the New Forest. 

The house in the New Forest had come about a lot earlier than we thought. Originally we thought we'd start looking nearer to when the time when my daughter went to university next September / October time, but my husband saw this house and we went straight to see it, loved it, bought it and now have to time to do any necessary work or renovations to it before we move there next year.

The house ticks all the boxes - two miles from the sea and a 100 yards from the forest.

You can imagine that my quilting had to take a bit of a back burner as I was preoccupied with the house move, but I managed to get my last newsletter out a couple of days before we moved and added a pattern for some summer placemats onto my website and within a couple of weeks had set up my temporary craft room in my bedroom at the house we are renting till next September. Sewing is in my blood I think. I get a bit restless if I can't do any.

Within a month of moving to our rented home we set off for our trip to South Korea.

Here's just a few pics - they really do not do the country enough justice. Amazing place, amazing people, amazing culture and amazing food.

Despite suffering from Covid a month earlier and receiving a negative test result two days before flying, I was the only one in my family of four to receive a positive result from our mandatory test upon arrival at Incheon airport. Typical! I was then faced with 7 days isolation away from my family. I have to say I was very fearful that I was going to be carted off to some government institution in a foreign country but thankfully my hotel allowed me to stay in my hotel room for the duration and my husband had to go to another room. I had absolutely no symptoms, so I actually filled my days with whatsapp calls to my sisters, a bit of keep fit, video calls from my family showing me what they were upto, endless takeaways delivered by my husband and I also started planning my next quilting projects.

Once out of isolation, we went on an eight day tour and visited so many places and saw so much which was brilliant as I felt that I hadn't completely miss out. We even experienced a two day Buddhist temple stay - temple clothes, meditation, morning chanting (4.50 am!!!!!) at the top of an exhaustingly high hill and Sunmundo practise (a bit like karate). It was definitely an experience albeit a tiring one.

So fresh from our trip, I then reverted to sewing mode - particularly with Christmas in mind.

I wanted to make some Christmas cushions so I designed a collection of four star patchwork cushions which I have replicated and are sitting on my sofa at Christmas / New Year as we speak. These are available in kit and pattern form.

I kept with the cushion theme and designed a Christmas heart foundation paper piecing cushion which was free to my newsletter subscribers and then I adapted my Xmas hexagon star hoop pattern to have 1 inch hexies instead of a quarter inch hexies and made another cushion appliqueing the star onto the cushion top. For this I used some blue cream and gold Xmas Ivy and dot fabrics which I'd purchased previously from the knit and stitch show at Alexandra Palace. I was really pleased with it, I loved the rich colours - not the usual Xmas reds and greens.   

So I think I'm cushioned out for a bit - so bring on 2023. In my recent newsletter I talked about getting to grips with the EQ8 quilting software. I've got the instruction booklets and I'm hoping that it will help me to design more patterns a lot easier and also be a lot more time efficient. Watch this space!

I've got a few ideas whirring in my head for 2023 and I'm really looking forward to them, which of course I'll share with you in the coming months.

So all is left to say - Happy New Year to you all. May we all have a happy and healthy 2023.