Number 62

This is another Tula Pink block - number 62. This time I chose a single fabric to work with - the stripe - and then picked two which coordinate. It works ok, but I think the blue dominates a bit. 

It's better in a sort of zigzaggy layout.

Here's a closeup of the block on its own - I only made a dozen of them, as that's all I had of the stripey fabric. But it's fun to play!

The first of the flock...

...to be quilted. The flock of baby quilts for the Special Care Baby Unit, that is. I haven't bound it yet; I will probably wait until I have several and then making a load of binding at once to attach...

Pears...

I showed this little top a while ago, but now it has a border on it, so it's really finished. Another one for the Linus pile, I think. 

ATC Friday

Some more cards I worked on as a round robin player - with these, I was the second person to work on them, so I have photos of all three stages.  Here's the finished product, 

and here's what they looked like when I finished and passed them on, 

and here's how they arrived to me!

Liewise, here's the finished one

after my additions

when I received them.

Moving Houses

An ATC swap with a different - in addition to making each card shaped like a house (within the normal size constraints of an atc), these all have moving parts of some sort:

perhaps a door which opens

or a roofline which swings away to reveal something...

or the whole card might flip up to show something underneath....

or a double door, like a wardrobe...

Great fun to make!

Cross Stitch Update

Making progress. There's a lot of lawn to stitch!

Recognise this?

It started out life a little diffently, but it was one of the tops I passed along to someone else, to use for a charity quilt. In this instance, the lovely Dolores and her group, decided to add to it to make a single bed sized quilt - they have plans for borders already - I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops...

Flock of little quilt tops

My local Project Linus contact organises small quilts for the Special Care Baby Unit at a local hospital among her other Linus projects.  I decided to take these bordered 16 patch units and make them into a load of small quilts, instead of one big one. I could this way use smaller pieces of fabric to border them, and they won't take much time to quilt, so I might even quilt most of them myself!

Most of them are only 4 blocks and a border, but I needed one six to make up the numbers.

Fabric in

Went to Sandown today (National Quilt Championships), which, despite the official name, is actually a fairly small show, but it's local to me and I was collecting a quilt as a favour for a friend, so it made a nice afternoon. I looked at some quilts, and bought some fabric - it's only the 2nd time this year I've bought fabric (first was at Farnham Maltings in January), so I don't really feel guilty about it!  And I've been making good progress working through some stash stuff.  Most of these fabrics were sale price, though the amazing Alexander Henry Day of the Dead Tarot Card style fabric at front here, wasn't. Had to buy some anyway, though. The owls and birdies are both 60" wide fabrics, so I may use them as backings.

Loved these orange themed fabrics - the girl cutting said they'd sold loads of the fabric (which also comes in a pale background for the one with writing and a pale background with oranges, like the black one I bought.) 

And indulged in some FQ sets which were on sale, including an 8 pack of WOW (white on white) which I use a lot of, and often run out of.

And a few Moda FQ packs, which weren't particuarly on sale, but which I liked anyway. 

Batik Double 4 patch, with border

An oriental fabic for the border, though not as metallic as many of those. Seemed to suit the quilt top...

APC Friday

A little bit of a different kind of swap - a PIF (pay it forward) swap. This means you make a card for someone, then the next person makes one for you and so on - rather than swapping directly. This is an APC (Altered Playing Card) thread, so we are making cards themed to the person's collections.  A few I've done recently are a postage stamp theme, 

a sewing theme with buttons

And a postage stamp with animals theme.  I've done more, but couldn't find where I've put the scans/photos. Oh well!

Number 45

Another experiment with Tula Pink blocks - this one I thought I'd try in black, white and two other colours, but I'm not sure it worked. I'm still trying to reconcile the modern feel of these blocks, and the way they use colour, with the type of stash I have - not sure it's entirely successful, but I'm enjoying the ride!

And I'm sure this small stack will make a nice little quilt, even if they aren't perfect...

Cross stitch update

Well, this is what's next. A Lizzie Kate Summer Snippet. I did the winter one of these a while back, and they stitch pretty quickly, except the lawn section is larger than you think it's going to be...  Still, shouldn't take too long. A finished version can be seen here...

Blocks galore

Two different views of the various block sets I own (not yet put together). I'm sure there were some more added after I took this photo, but it still shows something.  Not saying just what! (Yeah, I know, but I like making blocks. It's what I like best.)

Summer Bird

Finished!  It was only a little one, admittedly.  What next?

More with strips

Well, the scrapbasket was doing ok, but the bag with scrap strips in it was getting a bit full, so time to attack that! I started with all the short (shorter than 6.5") strips which had accumulated at the end of the last strip-clearing project, because they were too short. I sewed these together into railfence type units, separating them into three approximate lengths and trimming as appropriate. Once they were over 6.5" long,  I then turned them sideways and added strips lengthwise to get them square. Another exercise in controlled scrappy...

Mellow yellow

June's actual colour for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is yellow (not the neutral I thought it was on June 1st, when I just had a quick peek at the background colour on the blog). I don't have an excessive amount of yellow, but still, I could do something with it, so I pulled out a piece of focus fabric which contained yellow, and some other things to go with it (and of course, some yellow!).

Here's what I chose to use...

and here's what was left to go back to stash after I cut out all the pieces needed for the double four patches.  Not a lot to stash, and some pieces to the scrap basket and strippy bag.