Lake Border

...and hey presto - a border!  This one was easy to decide on, as I actually had a piece of taupe-style fabric in my stash - seemed a clear choice. I think this top will go in my baby quilt stash, rather than going to Project Linus. I really like it, and half the blocks were made by a friend anyway...

Lady of the Lake

These are some Lady of the Lake blocks in Japanese taupe and taupe-style fabrics, which I finally got around to putting into a top. I swapped them privately with my friend Cathi for a while, then we sort of stopped. At that point, I had 10 blocks. I decided that I was more likely to use them if I put together 9 and donated the spare to a good cause, than if I had to make two more to up the number to 12. So...  now I think it needs a border!

More things found

Neither of these sets of blocks were lost, precisely, but they were put away because they were part of ongoing swaps - both swaps have pretty much stalled, which is fine as I have 9 or 10 of the Lady of the Lake blocks, which will make a decent size small quilt (I think they are 12" blocks) and 20 of the 12" African blocks, and a handful of small ones - again -plenty for a quilt...  So much for my basket with blocks sets in it, which was nearly empty!

Thoughts for 2012

I've talked a bit about some of the plans I have for 2012, but I thought I'd solidify them a bit here. I've mentioned wanting to continue if not precisely reducing my stash, at least rationalising it - that is, using up some of the fabrics I've accumulated which just sit around to no purpose, and so forth.

Last year, I did a pretty good job of reducing my scraps, and while I'd certainly not say I was scrap free, it's all a lot more manageable than it was. I will continue to use them up in projects, but let's face it, you can never be truly scrap free unless you stop sewing!

So the plan is to focus on reducing the larger pieces of stash - especially those in these two photos - the shelf of pieces which are 1/2 metre or larger. The first step was to sort, refold and in some cases, label those fabrics, which I have done. I now have a stack of largish pieces (2-4 metres)

A few two metre pieces

 and a large stack of one metre pieces.

Then, there's a pile of odd sized pieces and some 1/2 metre pieces, which I think will grow quite a bit when I sort out my "smaller bits" boxes.

These shelves (below) are full of Ikea CD storage boxes. There are 22 of them, three or four of which have very specifically themed fabrics in them (Christmas, Civil War Repros, African fabrics, maybe something else), but the rest of are sorted by colour (more or less - also stripes, metallics, etc).  In theory, nothing in these boxes is more than 1/2 metre of fabric, but of course, sometimes I slip. So I want to go through each box and tidy it up and take out any larger pieces (or any very small pieces) and put them somewhere more appropriate.

This also gives me the chance to refold some of the pieces (ironing where necessary) that have got squished, etc and also, just to see what's there. Sometimes you forget about stuff. Especially if it's stuff which was given you, you picked up in a sale or which was part of a packet of fabric, so you might not have paid as much attention to it as you would have otherwise. Some of these pieces might get used in the process, but that's not really the main aim, just a bit of organisation.  It's the larger pieces I want to do a few things with.

I also mentioned wanting to reduce my batik stash a bit - that's still true, but I'm not sure precisely what I'm going to do there. I was considering doing a circular flying geese block each month with the batiks, but I think I'm going to use that block for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge instead - I don't need to do a lot of stuff with scraps, but this will be something fun to do each month to carry on with the scrap reduction.  So, I'm still thinking about batiks. 

I also plan to start anew with the Farmer's Wife Quilt, this time in Japanese taupes (and similar fabrics), which will use the fabrics in this drawer - not that I mind having these, mind you.

A couple of other plans for 2012 include carrying on with the two private swaps I am in theory participating in - we are in a bit of a slowdown at the moment - a taupe Lady of the Lake swap with Cathi and an African block swap with Karol-Ann. Luckily, Cathi is busy doing excellent scrapbooking at the moment and Karol-Ann has a 10 week old baby, so neither of them is putting too much pressure on me to produce blocks for these swaps.

And finally, I have promised my mother to get back to this quilt, which I abandoned some time ago - it only (and here I use only in a somewhat ironic sense) needs a sawtooth border all the way around it and tiny sawtooth, appliqued tails for all the cats.  I may not finish it in 2012, but there will be progress, at the very least!

Ladies of the Lake

Another two Lady of the Lake blocks (12") for the private swap I'm doing with my friend Cathi - we couldn't remember whose turn it was, so we are each making one to take the other when we meet up on holiday next week. Of course, after the holiday, we still won't know whose turn it is!

Lady of the Lake

Two blocks by this name, for a swap I am doing with my friend Cathi - one is on the way to her with some other bits and pieces, the other is going in my drawer here to someday be made into a quilt top. Ah, triangles. Gotta love 'em!

Lady of the Lake

I had a lot of errands to do this weekend, so didn't get a huge amount of sewing done, but I did have the chance to make a couple of Lady of the Lake blocks for my ongoing private swap with Cathi. One needs to be taken apart at one seam and put back together, but for the most part, they came out ok, considering the number of triangles...

Bad blogger

That's right, it's official. I am a crap blogger. I can't believe it's Wednesday and I still haven't blogged the things I received in the post on Saturday and Monday or the quilty type activity of my Sunday. So, rather than slip even further down the rolls of bad bloggers, I am going to do some catching up.

First things first - the Tudor chimneys at Hampton Court. What do these have to do with quilting, you ask? Nothing. Except that the lovely Floribunda, aka Julie, was in London for her annual oh-my-gosh-it's-way-too-cold-to-be-a-tourist-and-why-can't-we-do-this-in-May business trip. So we met up out at Hampton Court, which is near my part of town. (Technically, we met up at Creative Quilting - my LQS, which is just over the road from Hampton Court Palace.) And we hung around Hampton Court for a while admiring the old stuff and chatting and being really cold. Olivia took a couple of photos of us in the centre of the maze in the garden, but none of them were very flattering of us - for one thing we just looked really cold. Which is probably because it was totally freezing.



Julie brought me some of these blocks, which are like last month's block lotto blocks, only the inverse of them - brights with white crossing them. I think I'm going to have to make some more to go with them to make a nice baby quilt or something.



And of course, I couldn't be at Creative Quilting without buying some fabric - I bought a few FQs as a present for someone, and I bought this FQ - two of my favourite things - taupe in colour with writing on it - and a roll of strips to go with it. This is just a little roll - not a jelly roll or anything - it's 10 strips - 1.5" xWOF. Not sure what I am going to do with them yet, but something. Perhaps even soon.



And in the post, a package from Cathi. A block in our new exchange of Japanese taupe Lady of the Lake blocks and...



Socks! My annual socks. A late birthday present. I {heart} my socks. Thanks, Cathi!




And finally. (See, I told you I was behind) This is a card from Diana in NZ - I took about a billion pictures of this ATC (ok, five) and not one of them turned out well. The fabric is a hand-dyed silk, with a nice, soft sheen to it. Which of course doesn't photograph at all. Sigh.

Fabric & blocks

Well, this morning I went down to the big annual fabric sale at Farnham Maltings - it was a crush, as usual, but I managed to snap up a few bargains anyway. I bought some batting, which I needed, plus a few fabrics to use as backings (the purple and blue batik - £2/metre - I bought 5 metres; the brown with white dots, also £2/metre, but it's 58" wide - 3 metres of that), and then some stuff I just liked - a metre of a batik toner (the fabric which the other stuff is laid out on), a metre of white on white, a metre of the blue and brown retro fabric and I think about a metre and a half of the blue Moda Marble (it was a bolt end). And three half metre pieces - one with trees, one with words, one with gorillas (I have a friend who is really into gorillas). None of those were more than £4/metre, which is pretty good.



And then, this afternoon, I actually made some more quilt blocks (astonishing, I know) - two more as promised for my African exchange and also, two Lady of the Lake blocks in calico and Japanese taupe fabrics for a new swap I am doing with Cathi - we were exchanging Dear Jane blocks for a while, but I think we both have enough now to stop exchanging and do something with them! So anyway, we decided to keep swapping but do something else. We had a nice star-themed swap all planned out and then got to talking about Lady of the Lake blocks, and well, you can guess what happened...