Tumbling blocks, part 2…

Recently, we spent a lovely few days in Lisbon. I had no idea what to expect but fell totally in love with the city's architecture, charm, and coffee eclairs. Patrick fell in love with some almond and custard tarts. Thank goodness we were only there for a few days, much longer and excess baggage would have had to be paid on the return journey. For me, Portugal rivals Paris for romance, and Dublin for live music. The Portugese love a good fado, which is a type of mournful ballad, sung to guitar accompaniment, about love, loss and life in general–great stuff! Although beautiful (and very steep!) by day, Lisbon comes alive at night, and wandering from fado to fado, tasting the local tapas and wine is an extremely pleasant way to pass the time.

Portugal is famed for its beautiful embroidery and I was hoping to find some love hankies, but was fairly unsuccessful in my search–all I managed was this small hankie with an appliquéd tulip on it. For those who don't know, love hankies were made by young girls as gifts for their loved ones. The hankies were decorated with flowers, birds, keys, and other tokens of love. Because the girls usually lacked schooling words might be misspelled, which only adds to the charm of the hankies.

Everywhere you look there are tiles: modern tiles, old tiles, abstract tiles and figurative tiles, even the pavements are tiled, which can become slippery when wet! Below are a selection of my favourite tiles, cobbles and tree warmers.

Tiles, cobbles and tree
covered in crochet.

I was already thinking of a tumbling blocks wall hanging, but when I saw the above tiles, it was too much of a coincidence to ignore! So tumbling blocks it is, and the layout below will be my design. It's not overly complicated, but there's enough going on to keep me interested, now I just need to order the fabric.

Elizabeth,
x.