Sneak Peek!

Been working on my second round of the Cotton Robin round robin piece - this is a very tiny sneak peek from the piece, which doesn't really tell you anything at all. Which is, of course, why I can post it!

Green rail fence blocks

Inspired by the baby quilt I quilted yesterday, I decided to make some blocks in greens and neutrals in the same pattern, but with orange centres. Soon, I promise, I will start stitching block sets together!

Japanese Taupe Baby Quilt

Quilted this up quickly and simply today for a colleague who is having a baby fairly soon. Not leaving it to the last minute or anything (her last day being next Friday). Now, to stitch the binding down...

Round Robin Friday

A few more before and after (or rather, after and before) ATCs - the starters were all mine; the finished ones have had two other people work on them after me.

Another Little Quilt

A little while back, I showed the quilt I made for round 8 of the Another Little Quilt Swap; this is the quilt I received - isn't it fun?  It's a bit more purple in real life, but purples are always hard to photograph...

Cross Stitch Update

Despite several evenings of not feeling much like working on cross-stitch, I did manage to make some progress on this spring piece. Poor little pink birdie looks lonely - I'll have to stitch the other two soon, to keep him company!

State of the Scrapbasket

Well, I whittled down some of the accumulated scraps, but more have come back, mostly green this time.  And there are still some uncut bits in the bottom from the Last Great Influx...

Ziggety Zaggety

Here, at long last, are all my lotto blocks from my win back at the end of January. It took a while for the last set to reach me, and then of course it took a few days to get them out and photographed.  Another stack to add to my collection of blocks which need dealing with!

Win some, lose some

A couple of blocks for the March block lotto - although I will only submit one to the official lotto - in the second block, I didn't notice until I stitched it all together and was photographing it, that I used the wrong side of the yellow fabric in the four patch units (it was pieced as a strip). The colours are actually fairly close and it's one of those fabrics where the back looks almost as finished as the front, rather than obviously "wrong side" like some do. I could, of course, take it apart and flip the squares over.  But it seems unlikely that I will!

Green floating rectangles

Inspired by a baby quilt on Anne's blog, I decided to make some green blocks in the same style. I chose green because of this:

Too much green, the lid didn't even fit. 35 blocks later (8" blocks), at least all the fabric fits in the green box, though I wouldn't say it was particularly empty...

Round Robin Friday

This is an example of one of those times when a round robin card really comes together in a wacky, unexpected way.  It started out with the Spanish text and the pear stamp, and just went all Mexican and Frida Kahlo. What could be better? I love this card...

A little more sedate, but still a good effect. 

And this one is just fun.  I do like text backgrounds - they provide a lot of interest, but also a lot of possibility...

Pile of tops

I was thinking today about the sets of blocks I have (many of which I will try to make into tops over my Easter holidays) and then remembered that I have several stacks of tops already waiting to be given away. This is a stack for general giving away (which I'll do again in a month or so - just did one recently, so I'm not ready to do it again so soon), but there is also another stack waiting for a specific person/organisation. Perhaps I should trawl the web for places that might want unquilted tops - I know there are tons of them in the US, but ideally I'd like some in the UK.  Cheaper postage that way!

Cross-stitch update

Well, looking at this now, there's more progress than I thought. There are still some white bits to stitch in the picture, as well as a few birds in those large blank spaces, but after that, it's just the rest of the words, and that's it - which is good, as I want to stitch spring-like stuff!  

Diagonal strips

I mentioned to a friend recently that the best way to get rid of excess strips is good old strip blocks - these are foundation pieced (always best when working diagonally), and there are 14 of them, partly because that's how much I had of the foundation fabric, and partly because I figured I could get away with setting them on point.  Of course, there are still strips in the bag, but it's only about halfway full now...

More butterflies

Another number in the series of butterfly APCs (Altered Playing Cards) - these are the 8s I made for the swap - I am trying to make each number (or letter) substantially different from the one before it, though it can get a bit tricky not to get repetitive after a while. Amazing how much embellishment stuff I have related to butterflies, though.

Cotton Robin Sneak Peek

I am once again taking part in the Cotton Robin - a round robin of small quilts. I finally got a chance to add something to the centre block I was sent to work on and here's a tiny sneak peek, in black and white. You can have a look at all the possible centres here - I won't tell you which one I had, though you might be able to work it out. The photo still doesn't give much away, even if you think you know... 

Framed Four Patches

Taking another stab at clearing out some of the strips in the strip bag, I made some framed four patch blocks. The four patch centres are from the leaders and enders I was making with the basket of 2" squares, and the strips are also 2" wide, though I trimmed all the blocks a little smaller in the end to make the sides really straight. Unfinished size is 6". 

I made a lot of these - about 100. I wish I could say I ran out of strips at that point, but I didn't.  So there will be more strip projects coming.  Though I think April really needs to be The Month of Assembling Block Sets.

ATC Friday

Some more round robin ATC cards - as usual, you never really know where a card is going until it comes home...

Some blue strip blocks

Decided to take another stab at reducing some of the blue stash - especially with the influx of blue novelties recently. So I just made some blocks which were made up of four strips - really easy to do, and actually clears a fair amount of stash - think I might do the same with green soon, as I can't even fit everything in that box!  (Of course, the basket that holds my block sets is getting full, so it may be time for another push on turning those block sets into quilt tops...)

Cross stitch update

With the pink birds (more or less) done, I had to start a new piece, of course, to alternate with the winter garden - this one is called Singin' in the Spring and I thought it would be a nice antidote to the wintery one I'm still stitching in alternate weeks.  The design is by Country Cottage Needleworks - you can see it finished here...

Another little quilt swap quilt

Now that the quilts are all assigned and have been mailed (and many received) in the latest round of the ALQS, I can show what I made for this round of the swap - a little blue and yellow geometric piece. 

It's always fun to play around with something a little different for these swaps...