What to do with a charm pack...

...watch this space.

Batik Framed Fours

These are two more tops I put together over the Easter holidays - from blocks from a swap ages ago. I have very few swap blocks left, if any - but it's taken a while to get to that point!  One of these tops will stay with me and the other go to a charity.  Not sure which is which, just yet!

Funky Log Cabins

Another finished top for the pile today - this one was a mere matter of assemblage - the blocks came from a swap with my dyeing group. 12 x 12" blocks, makes a quick top.  I am now down to only a handful of block sets which are languishing about waiting to be put together - I do have the new scrappy log cabins I have been making as well, but that particular basket is getting emptier...

Wonky Blocks

A while ago I did a swap with my dyeing group of wonky log cabin blocks - I've had the returns sitting here for ages, but haven't got around to photographing them until now. I have a bunch more of these I made for myself upstairs - I think I have about 20 total.

Lots of log cabins...

Worked today on some more log cabin blocks for that swap, which will be later this year - I now have 20 blocks, so however many people sign up for the swap, I should have enough to send - and enough to keep so that when I get mine back I can (in theory) make up a top more or less straight away. I have actually depleted my selection of hand-dye scraps fairly thoroughly, which is great. The only ones left are quite small scraps, which I'm sure I can use for something, someday...




I also made this sort-of log cabin block to go with Maria's blocks for the Around the World Quilt Bee - I haven't had a mailing of this in a while, as there had been a few hold-ups along the line, but finally got two in the post last week, and have now made a block for one of them. The other will come next week - it has a teapot/teacup/teatime theme, so I know more or less what I want to do for it, but I thought it would take longer, so I've done this one first.




...and here are all of the blocks for Maria's quilt together - there are a lot of stars in the recent months, but I went back to the earlier blocks for inspiration - anyway, I was in log cabin mode...

Beach Huts

I mentioned a few days ago that I had started a new cross-stitch - here it is - some very summery beach huts. Not making bad progress, really - we'll see how it goes. Perhaps I'll manage to get it finished sometime in summer.

I did lots of other sewing today - worked on the wonky log cabin blocks - but I haven't taken a photo yet, as I will probably work on them again tomorrow. I also have two blocks to do for the Around the World Quilt Bee - I haven't had a mailing in ages, but did finally get one and will do my best to get at least one block done within the next few days, and mailed along. I had intended to do it today, but as my entire workspace was covered in the scraps and blocks for the wonky log cabins, I thought I'd try to get those finished up and out of the way first. But as I have some time in the mornings next week, I should be able to get to it soon, regardless.

Wonky log cabins

Here are beginnings of some wonky log cabins made with hand-dye scraps. My dyeing group is going to swap these later in the year, and as I was looking for something fairly straightforward to piece today, I decided these were just the thing. They are going to be 12" blocks - at the moment they are 5-6", so we've got a ways to go. Hopefully it will make a bit of a dent in the basket in which I keep my hand-dye scraps!

I also spent a while today working on my quilt top for ALQS4 - I think I'm not going to blog that as I go along, though, and let everyone be surprised when they see the quilts on the swap blog. I've got pictures of 3 so far; soon I will start putting them up!

Forgot to post this!

As I mentioned before, I am making some more of the wonky log cabin blocks, this time in warm colours. It's making a nice dent in my scrap basket, and so far I haven't even touched the strips in the shoe boxes of strips (which are a lot emptier after I did all the cool colour blocks). I'd really like to get rid of all my accumulated scraps - or at least, a lot of them - so I think this might be the way to go. I may also offer some stuff up to people who do charity quilts - I have a lot of pre-cut squares, for instance - which I don't think I'm really likely ever to use.

Anyway, there are a lot more of these warm colour blocks on the go and I plan to work on them some more today. Tomorrow I might make some blocks for the April block lotto, but I won't be able to show them yet, so perhaps I'll show more of these blocks.

And yes, I did redesign my blog, by playing around with the template designer on Blogger Draft - I know it looks kind of autumnal rather than spring-like, but it suits me. I'm sure I'll fiddle with it some more before too long, as it seems to get easier and easier to do - thank goodness!

More scrappy log cabins...

Today I finished the last of the purple, blue and green scrappy wonky log cabins - I have 36, 10" blocks, which will make a nice sized lap quilt. It made such a nice dent in my scrap basket, that I decided to go ahead and do some in warmer colours, so have pulled out orange, red, pink, brown and black (again) scraps and am working on some in that colourway, too - I can actually see the bottom of the basket now!

Deja vu?

I know, this looks more or less like yesterday, albeit there are 12 blocks instead of 10 - but I promise this is a new set of blocks, and in fact, these are 10" blocks, not 9". I have some more to finish off, most of them only needing one or two more rounds before trimming - when finished I will have 30 blocks, which will make a nice size lap quilt. I might do another one later, using all my red, yellow and orange scraps!

Another block swap top

Amazingly enough, I am nearly out of sets of blocks to put together into tops. I think I have 3 or 4 left, and then that's it (I know - time to quilt some of them!) These blocks are from a swap with my dyeing group in 2005 - I know the year as some of the blocks are signed & dated. All the fabrics are - of course! - hand dyes.

I also worked on another round of the Bloggers Round Robin today, but as that's a secret project, I can't show what I did - too bad - these are fun to watch grow...

Yes, a couple more...

Here's one of the tops from yesterday - it definitely works better with a wider border, and the narrow blue frames it nicely, I think. It's still quite a small piece, and will make a good wall0hanging.



And this is the other thing I worked on yesterday, but I didn't get the batik stripe borders on until today. These tops have all gone together very quickly - even with sashing and additional borders, because the blocks themselves were all already made (including the blocks for the border in this quilt), putting them into tops is quite a quick process. These are 9" blocks from a batik & black swap - all the coloured fabrics are batiks (as are the border pieces). The blacks are an assortment of blacks and black-on-blacks.

I am down to just 4 or 5 sets of blocks which need making into tops - started with another group today, as it happens - I'd love to get all of them made up into tops by the end of the year. We'll see how that goes, though...

HST Swap Top

A long time ago - we won't say how long ago, as that would be embarrassing - I hosted a swap on the scrapquilting forum on Delphi, wherein we swapped 12" blocks composed of HST units only. We each picked our accent colour (a cream background being a given) and I chose black or BOB or mainly black. I received somewhere 20 blocks for this swap. Four of them, I gave away a while back (apparently, in April 2008 - where does the time go?) so that I could make a quilt with the remaining 16. Well, today I got them out and looked at them and decided that I didn't like the way they looked without sashing (you can see them all together in the linked post above) so decided to sash them with something bright, to give them some zing.

The problem there was, once sashed, we were looking at a really big quilt. Also, I didn't have enough of any fabric I liked with the black and white HST blocks to sash them without buying more fabric (and while I'm not opposed to buying fabric in principal, at the moment, I'm trying to make do from stash). So I decided to reduce the number yet again, down to nine. I chose the nine which worked best together, leaving out 6 which had black fabric with bits of other colours in (as opposed to being strictly black or black on black) and one which had a much more creamy background than the others (ironically, the block I made myself for the swap).

Of course, halfway through assembling the blocks with the blue sashing, I discovered that one of them was actually half an inch smaller than the others, so it came out and in went the block I'd made (actually, I'm glad to have that one in, so it all worked out for the best, lol) - as you can see in the photo above the difference in the cream fabric is not really that dramatic - can you spot which block it is?* Some of the blocks above look better in person, for instance the centre block has two different BOBs in it, and that actually shows in person.

The remaining 7 blocks I will use as part of the backing for the quilt - nothing wasted that way. And actually, I really like all of them, so I'll be glad to have them in the quilt rather than given away somewhere else. I can even use the one that's slightly too small (which is a Broken Dishes block, a pattern I love) if I'm not trying to line it up with sashing!

The border is a black and grey print with triangles on it - very suitable, I thought. I had hoped to be able to mitre the corners, but didn't have quite enough fabric - even with a regular border, I only had a 2x6.5" inch rectangle of the fabric left - and a 2" WOF strip from the original cutting. Oh and I should say that the fabric used for the sashing is a leftover from a commissioned quilt I made earlier in the year - there is still a little leftover, but not even enough for binding, I think, so I feel good about using that up as well.

On the whole, I'm very happy with this - I like the way it looks and it used several things which have been hanging about. It won't get quilted any time too soon as I don't have any spare batting at the moment, and am not going to buy any for a little while, unless there is something I specifically need to quilt for a reason. I have some small scraps, so can take care of little things without more batting. I will probably buy some at Farnham Maltings quilt sale in January as they usually have some good deals there.

I did actually do several other things today (though it's amazing how much time it took to work out what to do with these blocks) - I finished the 9 blocks for the November block lotto (these I can't show until November - which at least gives me something to show the week we go back to school and I have no more sewing time) and made a binding for the log cabin Christmas tree mini. Tomorrow I will attach the binding so it can get sewn down in the evening and then that's another thing I can tick off my list - in fact, it can go in the post with the rest of the goodies for that swap and I can consider that obligation fulfilled!

*bottom centre

Back to school...

Finished up the dresser runner today in another unexpected bit of time at home - mostly on Wednesday mornings I've been going swimming with some friends, but we didn't go today for various reasons, so I snatched a little more sewing time before heading to work (school back today, which means work today for me, though I spent most of it outside in the snow, first at lunchtime with big kids and then in the nursery with little kids. Fun was had by all.) So I finished this first - only took about half an hour as it was in rows already. It's not that big - the squares are only 4", so the overall size is about 20"x60" or so. It will cover the full depth of the dresser, but will hang over the sides at each end.

And then, as I still had an hour or so, I pulled out this baby quilt which I'd handily pinned earlier, and did a quick allover double loop meander on it. Not very inspired, but it works. And the quilt blocks are great for a baby quilt - an instance of a set of swap blocks that really works. Even the one block with a rather light navy blue doesn't look too out of place...

Not giving things away - part 3

Just when you thought it was safe to start reading the blog again, here's another post about all the blocks and tops and whatnot I have hanging around waiting to be used... This one will show all the sets of blocks I HAVEN'T given away in the last year on my blog. There are quite a few, I warn you now!

1. Japanese Lantern Blocks. 8x12". 46 blocks. These are from a swap I ran on about.com in Spring 2007 and although I really liked the idea at the time, I am less enamoured of them now. Still, I think they will make a nice quilt someday, so I am hanging on to them. I may not use all of them when I come to make the quilt, but for the moment, I'm not making any decisions.

2. Black and batik. 9" square. 12 blocks. These are from a swap on another forum on Delphi (not QuiltShoppe or Scrap Quilting, but I can't remember where) and the swap was originally for three 18" blocks and a bunch of 9" blocks. I have used two of the 18" blocks for mini quilts for gifts - one for a leaving present for a friend & colleague of Geoff's and the other as a wedding present for a friend. The third one, I think I gave away, as well as a few of the 9" blocks which didn't work as well as the others. These 12 will make a nice small quilt, so I'm happy to keep them around for a while.

3. Batik stretched stars. 8" square. 20 blocks. Another nice baby quilt. Originally I think I had some grand plan to make more of these with a batik background and cream star points, but well, let's be realistic, folks.

4. Sand and blue batik blocks. 6" square. 20 blocks. From a swap with the euro-swap group - all are pieced onto magic paper or other superthin lining. Just need to put them together. Not sure why I haven't. Keep forgetting they are there, I guess. I think I have enough baby quilt materials to last quite a while!

5. Batik Jacob's Ladder. 12" square. 4 blocks. I had a load of these and sent most of them to Margaret for Project Linus quilts - I decided to keep four of them - with a little border, they'll make a nice baby quilt.

6 & 7. Hand-dyed 9 patches. 6" block. 32 blocks. From a swap on the dyehard group. I used a number of these to make a bag as a present for someone last Christmas (2007) but there are some left. I used the disappearing 9 patch technique - which is what we all had in mind when we did the swap. 6" framed squares in hand dyes. 72 blocks plus 21 with signatures in the centre. Also a dyehard swap, from a long time ago - I'm thinking 2005. Not sure what I will do with these, but I should really do something. Or at least work out how many I need to use so I can pass the others along to someone who can make better use of them!

8. Black HST blocks. 12" square. 16 blocks. These blocks were from a swap where the theme was blocks that could be made solely from HST units - I had more blocks than this, but removed some which weren't the right colour (supposed to be a white background, I think) or which just didn't go with the others. These 16 will make a nice throw, though.

9. Batik Framed Four Patch. 10" square. 62 blocks. Not sure why I have 62 of these - it seems a lot. I think this was a swap on about.com. Here, I will almost certainly separate them into a few smaller sets and then give the leftovers to someone doing charity quilts.

10. This is sort of three sets of blocks, though they are all similar and could be used together - all are 6" square and there are 40 of the ones with purple triangles; 58 of the dark blue and 48 of the light blue. Not quite sure why I made these - there was a point when I did a lot of blocks using batik strips - I had belonged to a batik FQ monthly club and had a lot of batiks. So I made these blocks and then kind of got bored of them. But I will use them for something.

11. These are more that I made at that point, only I have used some of these for a baby quilt for a friend so there are only 26 left. They are 7" squares. There are also 56 half-sized blocks left. I think these would make a nice border on something - that's what I have in mind with saving them, at any rate.

12. This one doesn't have a photo as it seems to have vanished in between my taking the blocks out of the box and counting them and now (read: I managed not to take a photo of them) - 6" Green and Purple Buckeye Beauty blocks - 50 blocks. They look like this - only there are more of them. I won these in the block lotto last summer and intend to make - you guessed it - a baby quilt from them.

13. Layer cake blocks. I think there are 48 of them - when they are all laid out, they look like this. Frankly, I think this will be one for the longarmer, so there's no real rush in getting them put together.

14. The little double four patch blocks with Japanese taupes on the right of the left-hand photo are actually not a set of blocks, as I am still making the blocks. They should go in the NEXT post, which is all the stuff which is sort of being worked on at the moment - not in block or top state, but I photographed them together for some reason, so there you go. Anyway. This is eventually going to be a new runner for Geoff's dresser - which has a runner on it now, but it's old and anyway, it's sometimes nice to wash it and I'd rather have something else to put there in the interim (it's an old dresser made of proper wood, so it scratches easily and gets watermarks, etc).

15. And on the right, the last set of blocks - these vary in size and there are lots of them - I didn't count them, as it happens. They are from the first birthday block swap I hosted on about.com, last year, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them yet. They will all get used for something, but probably not all in the same thing as there are lots of them, plus although they all have black or BOB backgrounds, the blacks vary a lot and some work better together than others.

This may seem a long list, but it's a lot better than last year's list would have been - since last year I have got rid of a number of sets (or partial sets) of blocks, made at least 4 or 5 baby quilts (complete) from blocks and put together a number of sets of blocks into finished tops. I have also passed a few finished tops on to Project Linus or similar to go for charity quilts. Progress is being made, it's just slow. Probably because I am more into small things and mixed media at the moment - though every so often I really just want to make blocks, LOL.

Stuff and things

Lots of lovely treasures again in the post today - the first being a big envelope from my mother, who has been rooting through junk boxes at yard sales and stuff on my behalf - gotta love mothers, doncha? - anyway, she also sent some fat quarters - bought on sale somewhere, and some bits and pieces for the kids, but the real treasure of the lot was all these great bits and pieces of broken jewellery and so on. The pink necklace in the photo, I had originally thought to take apart for artwork, but actually, on closer examination, it's not really broken, just missing a little loop to hold the clasp, and now, having replaced the loop, I think I might keep it to wear.

I also received another round of the Spring Fling Round Robin - this is the one that I am due to quilt. Suggestions welcome - no idea what I'll be doing with it yet, other than the fact that it's going to be machine quilted.



Thought I'd also mention that another round of the Four Seasons Quilt Swap is now open - Summer. Do pop over and check it out!



And finally, some actual work - these two little Dear Jane blocks were done this morning while waiting for my friend to come pick me up for our day at Wisley Gardens (lots of photos of pretty flowers over here, if you like that sort of thing) and the photo on the right shows the binding on the Log Cabin Star quilt, which is now done and the quilt is on my bed, with a sleeping DH under it...

JQP 25, binding decision and so on

What is it about photographing things that are purple, that makes them never come out quite right? I tried this in three different lights, and this is the closest, but it's still not right... Anyway, this is my journal quilt for the week - the background is the piece that I monoprinted earlier in the week, and I have added purple cord couched down, following (loosely) the designs in the printing, except in the pink part in the upper right corner, where I have added bright pink roving. A few faces and a word as accents, and that was enough, I decided. Sometimes less is more, right?

The rest of the piece of monoprinted fabric went to be backgrounds for these ATCs, which are unfinished - I have added some purple cord to them (as I had it out anyway) but not sure what will happen with them next - but as it's easy to make some backgrounds to have ready when you are doing something else, I decided to try to make a policy of doing that wherever it's sensible in my work. So now these will wait a while until I want to do something else with them. And again, they are much more purple and less blue than in the photo.

Lots of you added your advice or opinions about the binding for the log cabin quilt (thanks!) but in the end, I surprised myself by deciding that I really didn't like the purple around the edge - it was fine along the green bits, ok along the neutral, but I really disliked it along the purple corners. Not this one so much, but the darker ones - just looked bad. Which just goes to show the importance of auditioning fabrics for these things! I also tried some greens, but was uninspired. Perhaps a very dark green might have worked, but I wasn't really liking the whole green effect. So on to the neutrals - and indeed, what looked best was a dark neutral - dark beige, not quite taupe, but not too yellowy, a bit of that greyish cast which I associate with taupe. This photo doesn't show it brilliantly (I haven't hand-sewn it onto the back yet, so it's a bit hard to photograph), so you'll have to trust me that it was the right choice. Of course, once the binding is sewn down, I will show another photo!



And here's what else I have to show from today - two things received in the post - a "Q is for" postcard - a very different take on "Queen" than the other one I have but also nice. This is from Jeannette, and I particularly like what she's done with Freddie's hand and the crown. And the block is another birthday block, from Anne. Soon, I promise, I will take a photo of the ones I have so far, laid out together.

Log Cabin Star

So, here's the quilt I took to the longarmer the other day - yes, I know it was only a few days ago, but that's the advantage to living down the road from your longarmer - when she's ready to do your quilt she rings and says bring it over... Needless to say, the quilt is more square than it appears hanging on the washing line, which I hadn't propper up with a pole, being basically a lazy person - but trust me, it's square (72") and once I bind it I will take a better photo. What do you think - purple or green to bind, or should I do multicolour?

A closeup of the quilting pattern as well, which I really like. This one is going to get bound very soon, as I want to put it on my bed for the summer!

Nothing else to show today as I got nothing at all of interest in the post (AA renewal documents, junk mail, catalogue) and spent a lot of the day at school brainstorming for the summer fair - the hour or two I had at home, I just didn't feel like working on anything. Perhaps tomorrow... The only problem with nice weather is you hate to be indoors, even doing something you enjoy.

Bags of fun

Making up for not posting yesterday, by posting twice today, including one with a reasoanble amount of stuff to show (though actually, one of the things I did today, I can't show yet). Firstly, here's what came about 8am in the post - my bag from the bag swap that Barbara organised. And it was loaded with lots of goodies - in fact, not sure how she managed to fit them all in. The bag is from Weronica in Sweden and I love the fabric, even if the bag is probably a little too glam to suit my incredibly boring mumsy lifestyle! But I like it a lot so I will use it anyway. Inside was some tea (the large canister), some sweets, a tray, some sticky gold trim, a quilting record book, a kit to make a lovely bead necklace and a covered tape measure - when you press the purple flower on top, the tape measure retracts. I've seen these done before, but have never got around to making myself one - and now I don't have to - yippee! Anyway, a great bag and a great bunch of treasure - thank you Weronica.



And I did some work myself today, as well. The first thing I did, I can't show - I made 8 blocks for the May Block Lotto on about.com, but as it's still sneak-peek only for the May Lotto, no photo there. One to come when May comes - sooner than I can believe anyway - where did April go? I also did three last blocks for the April lotto (I had done 5 before; there's a maximum of 8 each month; I usually do the maximum as it's more fun that way) - they are shown on right. These are 6" blocks, so quite small. Nice for using small scraps.

And then, I decided to put together the orange blocks from the orange block swap - I decided they'd make a nice baby quilt, and as I'll be needing more of those before too long, it seemed a good time to put them together. I had 11 of them, so I had to make another one first (middle block, 2nd row) and take one apart and reconstruct it slightly (one piece in backwards). I decided to sash them, partly because sampler tops work better that way and partly because I thought the top needed a little bit of another colour or two.