Paper pieced kaleidoscope update

The paper pieced kaleidoscope wall-hanging is growing again. For a brief moment it was squared up and could have been framed and left there, but I decided to carry on and it morphed again, this time into a shallow-pointed star.

It is a complete delight to work on something that takes on a different and interesting new guise each time a new round of pieces is added. It provides a form of instant gratification that belies the reality that this piece is taking a horribly long time to complete (I started the sewing on this three weeks ago).

And here you can see a little more growth of a round yet to be completed. It will measure just over 32" when it's finally completed and the end is now feeling so near that I'm starting to think about a trip to my favourite local antique shop to source a frame. My only worry is that frames this big tend to be quite difficult to find and they also tend to be rectangular, rather than square. I'm wondering whether I will have to compromise and create wider panels at the top and bottom to fit it to the right frame. I think for this I'd prefer something old, rather than having a frame made especially for it.

Thank you so much for all the lovely entries to the Christmas fabric giveaway in the last post - it was so lovely to read through all your Christmas traditions. The winner is Rachel of Contented who said: What gorgeous fabrics! This will be our first Christmas since we started homeschooling our son, so I am looking forward to doing lots of Christmassy crafts and activities with him this year! Congratulations, Rachel. Just let me know your address and which bundle of fabrics you'd most like and Dragonfly will be in touch.

I decided it was best to wrap this giveaway up quite quickly as I suspected that whoever won the fabric would probably appreciate receiving it in November and having a little more time to put it to use  - all apart from Jane, who (shockingly, but delightfully!) admitted to not having taken her tree down from last year and so who would have surely been the best candidate to have made use of the fabric all year round! Jane is an inspiring example of what can be achieved with this curiously unflinching attitude to what really does and doesn't need doing, as she is a prolific maker of very beautiful quilts. However, ultimtely, I felt that as Jane has had the fun of bucking social norms and conventions for the last eleven months of the year, the joy of free fabric ought to go to someone else, even though my initial inclination was to stop comments the moment hers came in and declare her the winner. Just think how quickly I could have done this damn paper pieced kaleidoscope if I were Jane. Today I am not going to vacuum the house in her honour. Thank you for the inspiration, Jane :).

Florence x

Ps. I feel compelled to say that this is not meant to imply Jane's house isn't spotlessly clean or that Jane doesn't use a vacuum cleaner herself. My lack of hoovering is simply my own rather insipid take on her carefree attitdue to freestyling with expectations.