November in Pictures: Autumn Walks and Cosy Quilting

November was a busy (and quite stressful) month for me behind the scenes, but I still found time for some fun and crafty stuff...

I spent lots of time on the sofa hanging out with this fluffy fella...

... and braved the cold for some very nice days out - including a trip to East London to visit one of my favourite museums, meet up with an old friend (amazingly we hadn't seen each other for 16 years!) and do some shopping at this year's Renegade Craft Fair.

Look at all the lovely cards I bought at the fair! You'll find links to all the designers here.

 

A couple of my projects ended up in print in November: my sky pompoms were featured in Glamour magazine and two of my childhood collections were included in a fab little kids book about the joys of collecting. It makes me very happy to think that my collections might inspire kids to start collections of their own.

Meanwhile, here on the internet, I turned my Felt Autumn Wreath into a tutorial for the Village Haberdashery blog, shared a fun gift wrapping tip, and posted the last few tutorials in my free felt Christmas ornament series.

One morning in the middle of the month, the weather was just so gorgeous that it seemed wrong to waste it so I took a few hours off work to go for a walk with my dad (flexible schedules are definitely one of the perks of being self-employed!

We went for a walk along the Jubilee River, which is actually a man-made flood relief channel connecting to the Thames. It was so peaceful and so beautiful, and the day was so mild we didn't even need our gloves. Truly wonderful.

 

I haven't had a chance to blog about our walk yet, but I did blog about a recent visit to Kensington Gardens. After my autumnal walk through Kensington Gardens, I spent the rest of the day at the V&A and met up with a friend to see their excellent and fascinating Opus Anglicanum exhibition. If you're at all interested in textiles or in history, I highly recommend seeing this exhibition if you can! We said "wow!" a lot while looking round it.

I also blogged about a not-so-recent trip to Oxford, and shared a photo from a flying visit to Clevedon. My dad was baffled that I wanted to take a photo of the peeling paint on this door in Clevedon, but just look at it! The colours and all those interesting textured layers!

I shared a wider shot on my Instagram Stories as well because it was frankly too fabulous not to share:

Back at home, I was busy putting in lots of hours of stitching on the Christmas quilt I'm making for my Christmas-loving sister.

As I finished each line of hand quilting, I marked it off on a paper chart so I could easily track my progress.

It was hugely satisfying to finally get the last row stitched! My stitching is nowhere near perfect, of course, but I'm very pleased with how the quilting has turned out.

The quilt "just" needs trimming and binding now. I wasn't sure whether to go for red or blue binding, so I asked everyone for their opinion (via my Instagram and Facebook pages) and pretty much everyone voted for red... so red it is!

I want to choose the binding in person to make sure it matches the reds in the quilt, but I haven't had the time to schedule a binding-shopping trip yet. Christmas is approaching fast, though, so I'd better get my skates on.

Talking of Christmas... if you're looking for fun felt things to make this winter, I highly recommend Fa La La La Felt and 'Tis the Season to Be Felt-y. I am a teeny bit biased because they both feature some of my designs, but honestly these books are filled with festive felt-y joy.

You'll also find a few Christmas projects in my first book, Super-Cute Felt, including this snow globe ornament. If you make something I designed this Christmas, do let me know! It's such a thrill seeing what people make from my patterns :)

My final November adventure was a trip to Kew Gardens with my mama. She hadn't visited Kew since she lived in London (about 35 years ago) so I was delighted to be able to give her a tour of some of my favourite parts of the Gardens. She especially enjoyed the rock garden and the Palm House.

Then in the evening we followed the magical Christmas at Kew light trail through the Gardens. Christmas at Kew was one of my highlights from last winter - I raved about it so much that my mum was determined to go with me this year, and it didn't disappoint!

I hope you've enjoyed this little look at my November. I'll share another Instagram round-up next month, which I predict will be full of frosty mornings and festive fun.

I'm lauralupinhoward on Instagram - click here to visit my page and follow me. You'll also find me on Facebook and Twitter.