Oh how the garden grows...

The sunny spring weather has sparked our garden into life and it is once again feeling like a productive urban garden. Every week our garden changes and new growth is becoming even more noticeable.  

The seeds I planted a few weeks ago are growing well on our windowsil...

The radishes are loving their window box location and starting to establish themselves...

The potatoes are starting to grow. I've topped up the compost on top of these leaves and given them a good feed. I'm hoping for a really good crop this year...

 The carrots seeds are starting to germinate outside...

The mixed lettuce leaves are starting to take shape too...

My Hosta has started growing again...

as have the buds and leaves on our clematis that hangs into our courtyard.

Are you growing anything this year? How are things looking in your gardening space? I hope you are enjoying the simple pleasure of watching plants grow.

My two-sided patchwork cushion cover

Over the past few years I have handmade cushion covers for our home. I love having my own handmade cushions in our home and enjoy how they look on our teal coloured sofas. I get a lot of pleasure each time I plump up the cushions knowing that I've made them myself and that they are unique.

For a number of months I've had my heart set on creating a new cushion cover for our snuggler sofa seat in our lounge. I spend a lot of time on the snuggler reading magazines, drinking tea, enjoying a spot of crochet and catching up on reading blogs, so I wanted this cushion cover to be something special for one of my favourite spaces in our home. 

Last year I bought some fabric specifically for making handmade projects for our home. The fabric collection was put together using a mix of navy, teal and grey patterned fabrics. I wanted to use these fabrics to make the new cushion cover. I decided that this project would be something different and I was keen to create a patchwork cushion cover to include all the patterned fabrics that I love and to try out new techniques of piecing fabrics together. I wanted to make something that wasn't piecing squares and I wanted to create my own patchwork design rather than take it from a book.

I decided to embark on making a two-sided patchwork cushion cover. I knew that one side of the cushion was going to be randomly sized rectangles but I wasn't too sure what the other side would be. After some deliberation I decided that equilateral triangles would be a good contrast, I really love the way they look in other projects I've seen. 

I spent time recently at my sewing machine finishing the cushion and I'm really pleased with the result.

I love the way the colours and patterns work together...

and that I've created two different cushions in one!

I love seeing all my favourite fabrics in one place...

and seeing how using patchwork can brighten up our teal coloured sofa.

I'm really pleased that I have finished this project, it has been a work in progress for such a long time and I wasn't sure I'd ever finish it! I'm glad that I spent time pondering how I wanted it to look. I'm really delighted that I decided to take the plunge to make the cushion two sided and try out something new for me. Joining together the equilateral triangles was a challenge initially but as soon as I worked out what I was doing it was good fun. Having a small project to work on made piecing different patchwork shapes easy to handle and not too daunting. I think I'm ready to try making something for our home on a larger scale now so watch this space!

Have you got any work in progress projects you have yet to finish or have recently finished? I'd love to hear about them.