October's Mini Mania Challenge - the Reveal

October is a bittersweet month for me - probably more bitter than sweet if truth be told.

I love the colours from the trees and this year seems to be particularly beautiful.  Last weekend I led an Autumn Walk for the 50+ Adventure Club  and it turned into one of the wettest walks that I have ever done.  It was fine when we started but after about an hour the rain started; initially a light drizzle but getting heavier as we progressed.  I had my hood up and this interfered with my glasses that steamed up and started wobbling as I walked and in the end I was so p****d off that I took the hood off and just got a very wet head!!  We passed a group of men shooting, who broke their guns and took out the cartridges until we had passed and at that moment a hare ran onto the track in front of us and they couldn't shoot it - lucky hare!!

Wonderful Autumn colours in the rain

A very wet group eventually made it back to the pub where we had an excellent lunch.  We had had the best of the weather though because the rain lashed down on the drive home!!

The following day, Sunday, I was on the coach to the Malvern Autumn Quilt Show and it was a glorious day with wall to wall sunshine.  I call that 'Sod's Law'!

The show was smaller than the Spring Show held there, but I enjoyed the display of quilts.  One group was quilted wall hangings of the Saints of Cornwall and I was amazed at how many different saints landed in the county and where they had come from - St Rea, St Martin of Tours, St Elid, St Mylor, St Roche, St Morwenna, St Meriadoc, St Cohan etc etc.  This display was originally shown at Truro Cathedral.

I loved the mini quilts:-

Just a small selection

some of which may give ideas for the Mini Mania, so I haven't shown them all as that would be cheating!

Anyway back to the October Mini Mania that had to be appliquéd, have some orange in it and have some personal connection to the month - oh and had to be no bigger than 14 inches.

I thought long and hard about this, surfed the net, lay in bed thinking (I get my best ideas there!!) and eventually came up with this.  My late husband and I had a lovely holiday in South Africa where there were beautiful, colourful flowers and 28th October was our wedding anniversary - it would have been 50 next year.

I used what I call 'backside appliqué' but is reverse appliqué. I am sure that I have explained this somewhere else on the blog but I cannot find it! However this link shows it reasonably well but I use muslin to draw on and the wadding is in place as this helps to give a good clean zigzag line of stitching.  Appliqué scissors are essential here to prevent cutting through the base fabric.  I used free motion quilting which I love doing.

Here is the finished result -

The background fabric is a dark bottle green

I hope you like it but what will November bring?