Quilty Glimpse

Here's a little glimpse of the latest (and last!) of the 18th birthday present quilts for Sarah's mates - this one needs to be finished by the 11th, so it was about time I got the binding attached.  A few evenings of stitching should get that binding sorted, though, so not to worry... Full pictures once it's made it to its destination.

Scrappy Double Fours

Another block set which I've now assembled into the start of a top. Again, a border will be wanted, so it's going into the box where I keep the tops awaiting borders. (As opposed to the block set box, or the box of tops with borders waiting to go to my Project Linus contact....)

Purple Linus HST Blocks

The final set of purple themed blocks I made for Project Linus - the first I started at a Linus day ages ago, and when I came home, I made lots more purple blocks - I had taken away quite a bit of purple with me (apparently it's a very popular colour in Linus quilts and is requested a lot). This is the final set of blocks to be put into a top centre. It will still want a border, so it's in that pile for the moment...

ATC Fridays

Another few sets which I finished off, adding the final element(s) before sending cards back to the other players...

Sunset stripe

Another border fabric pulled from the stash Liz from Project Linus gave to me for bordering purposes - this one to go around a rather busy crumb top.

Blue Log Cabins

Another quilt to which I added a border - one more for the Linus pile.

Scrap update

...and here's the state of the scrap basket/strip bag at the end of the recent clearout & block making fest. Ok, there's some stuff there, but I probably now have at least 6 months worth of space to put new scraps in again before it all gets out of control. Which is nice!

Block Set Update

So, I seem to be accumulating a load of block sets - guess it's about time to stitch some of them together!  Maybe that should go on my list of Things to Do...

Some more strippy blocks

...so that's what you do when you have lots of strips leftover from whatever you've been doing with your strips. Or at least, that's what I do in that circumstance. I'll add these to my already existing stash of strippy blocks and then eventually, in the fullness of time, do something with them.

Baby Quilts waiting

A couple of baby quilt tops waiting to be stitched up for people with upcoming babies - plus I have another one to make with fabric specially purchased. Probably need to start working quite soon, though the first one isn't needed until the end of March so it's not full panic mode yet...

ATC Friday

Some more finished ATCs - these are ones which I started, so the original background is shown below the finished item. I assume with this top one that the maker added the initials of the three makers, but I only got a "K" so I can't be 100 per cent sure...

VW bus border

Perfect border fabric for this centre with little bordered novelty blocks...

Cross Stitch Update

Very little done this week, as I have been out every evening helping backstage on the Gang Show (Scout and Guide variety show), which both Olivia and Alex are involved in this year. Poor Alice will have to wait until next week to have a head, I guess!

Angry spots!

This colourful top with lots of spotty fabric wanted something quite striking for a border, but luckily, I had this Star Wars Angry Birds fabric I could use. I think it works pretty well. 

Scrappy log cabin rectangles

Finally finished these up - there are loads of them, and I trimmed them rectangular, as they were heading that way anyway. This means I  may l need to think of interesting ways to set them, rather than just a straight set. Or not - we'll see!  Of course, there were still loads of strips left when I finished, so there will have to be something else done to get rid of most of those strips!

Another bordered top

Another centre to which I've added a border, so it can go in the Project Linus pile. I still have quite a few waiting for borders, not to mention lots of block sets, but I know this is a never-ending cycle, so I don't mind.

Priyanka's Quilt

...and here it is, in all its glory!  Now appropriately gifted (slightly before the actual 18th birthday, but they were all getting together today), so I can blog it. One more to go.

Close up of the lovely quilting, done by Lana at Bewitching Stitching

Cross Stitch Update

After I finished binding the quilt I showed earlier this week, I did have some time to return to my cross stitch piece - you can see, quite good progress has been made. It's only a small part of the whole though - it's a large piece. Can you guess who it is?

Black, white and green with trees

This is one of those tops which started out well, but never quite worked, I think.  Hopefully the tree border will cheer it up a bit and it will make someone a nice snuggly lap quilt...

ATC...Wednesday?

No Cross stitch to show this week as I have been either not home or binding and made very little progress on my stitching. So I'll show it on Friday, when I've got a bit more done as the binding is nearly finished.  Instead, some ATCs which have come back finished. I don't have a photo of the start of this one but it was the text background and the brown flower. 

With this one, you can see the finished and the original.

Blue border

Amidst emptying the scrap basket, there has been a little time for putting borders on quilt centres which are heading to Project Linus; here's one of them!

Job waiting...

One of my jobs for this week is to get the binding sewn down on this quilt, which is needed for a present soon. Shouldn't take long, though I forgot about it last night when I was watching the final episode of War and Peace - I probably could have got most of it done during that!

Scrappy Log Cabins - progress

Here's where the blocks were at the point I had to stop  - most of them need a few more rounds. Many of them are quite rectangular - I might trim some (or all) of them rectangular rather than square - that would be a slightly different thing to do with them!

Scrappy Log Cabins - next steps

Now that the scrap baskets are a bit more empty, it's time to start on this - the bag of strips. I'll be adding to the sides of those blocks (and adding, and adding) until I get to whatever size I think is useful (probably around 8" or so). 

ATC Friday

Some more ATC sets, which were round robins. On these two, I was the third person to add something. With the fish, I added some found poetry;

with the cats I added some teacups and the word "tea". 

Empty (mostly) scrap baskets

So, after working on piecing the little scraps, my scrap basket is mostly empty. There are still a few pieces of crumb piecing (which don't include HST units, so I didn't want to use them with this ongoing set of blocks) and a few pieces of lower quality fabric for foundations for strip blocks - I didn't want to cut that stuff up and "file" it, as I wouldn't use it for regular piecing.

And my little drawer of pieces smaller than 2" square is pretty empty, too, though there's a few things in there waiting for the next scrappy project to start.

Now it's time to attack the strips bag to carry on log cabin-ing with the scrappy blocks I've started a few days ago.

Cross Stitch Wednesday

Started a new piece to work on in rotation (more or less) with the 13 Colonies piece. This is only a very small portion of it; you'll have to wait to see what it's going to be!

The start of something scrappy

So, here's what's happening with the scrap basket pieces - I took the tiny offcut HST units (leftover from the chunky windmills) and used them as starter blocks for some scrappy log cabin type blocks.  I still need to go around these a couple times more (which is good, because I haven't even touched the strip bag yet, and it's getting full, too), but they'll be nice scrappy blocks when I'm done. Not sure how big they will be - depends on how many strips I have, I guess!

Scrappy square cutting

So,  a couple of hours of cutting alongside some sewing today, and I have lots of different sized squares, from 2" to 6.5", ready to file away for future projects. And of course, I also have lots of smaller pieces which need to be stitched into crumb blocks!