[Above] is a photo of my very first quilt, which I designed from scratch using EQ6. Our first grandson, Hector, was born on UK election day – May 6th 2010. This was an exciting event and I wanted to give him something to show how much we love him.

Cleo and Solo, the two Staffordshire bull terriers, are so much part of Hector’s family that I wanted to include them too – especially as Cleo is getting on a bit in years.
They were drawn straight from memory and I found EQ6 easy to use and wonderful for making templates.  The pieced blocks were chosen because they were called ‘hugs and kisses’ – very appropriate for our lovely boy. The quilt was machine pieced, then appliqued by hand and hand quilted.  The central panel was hand sewn and attached when we had a name and a date. The colours are a bit unusual for a baby quilt, but I wanted to make something practical that could just be thrown on the floor wherever they went. I love getting my EQ newsletter – thankyou for the inspiration!