Scrappy Log Cabins

Among the many quilt tops I've been putting together from my stash of blocks, there are 3 scrappy log cabins  - these are easy to put together because the order doesn't matter. 

Some of the other blocks are much trickier as they have to be laid out a certain way and then kept in the right order.

Frankly, if all of them were as easy as these to put together into tops, I probably wouldn't have a stash of blocks!

Textured Tree ATCs

No proper sewing today (although I did use my machine) as I had some ATC committments to fulfil - first on the cards (so to speak), a set of ATCs to the theme "textured trees".

I started with this textured blue paper and some brown linen fabric from an old pair of trousers. 

I couched the fabric (rolled up) onto the paper, to make the trunk. 

Then I added a little more fibre to the main part of the trunk.  After some experimentation, I decided to go with a variety of green leaves in paper, card and foil,  

stitched on in 2's and 3's. 

And finally, after sewing the cards to a backing (they were quite floppy at this point) I spritzed them with sparkly paint stuff (see top photo). They're fun, but I actually think I liked them best when they were just bare trunks!

I also added something to three different round robins of cards and made three sets of backs to send off to start new round robin cards. Perhaps that's what I'll show tomorrow!

Goodies

I didn't do any sewing today, as I went swimming with the kids (finally had a week where I could go myself, though the pool was packed so it was hard work doing lengths) and then had a load of errands to run in the afternoon, but one of the errands was to a fabric shop in Kingston, to look at things for school.  It's not a quilt shop, it has far more of the shiny, stretchy, furry type fabrics, but on a small table there was a selection of fat quarter bundles marked "quilting collections".  It's probably not the very best cotton fabric, but it's 100 per cent cotton, and better yet - £3.50 for 4 fat quarters (yes, I hear you gasp, that works out to £3.50/metre). How could I resist?

I also dug through the remnant bin and found this (hard to see - it's kind of meshy, very soft, would do well for layering in arty projects) - there's at least 70cm of it - for £1. I will probably only ever use about 12" square - this is why I had so many sheers and things like that in my bin I recently cleared out - when you use this sort of thing on tiny projects you often end up with lots of leftovers.  But for now, I'll keep it all, and someday, there will be another clearout...

And finally, in Wilkinsons (which for those outside the UK is kind of like Woolworths), some washi tape - 2 rolls for £1.75.  I'm sure it's not the best washi tape - it is Wilkinson's, after all - but at that price, it will do me just fine!  Tomorrow will perhaps bring some time for creating (though there's a lot of cleaning to be done as well...)

Low volume hearts

One of the many tops (or rather, two) that I put together over the weekend are these low-volume hearts. I decided to make them into two baby quilt tops as I thought they really suited the baby quilt idea...  So, here's one top with 16 hearts - this one will get made up fairly soon and donated to our local library's Friends group to help raise money for the library organisation - they are having a fair in July and I have offered a baby quilt for the raffle.

And this one, made from 20 hearts, will go into my personal stash for when I next need a neutral baby quilt. Although looking at the photo, I'm finding the balance a little off - the right hand side is all very light blocks, so I might shift a block or two around.  Or not, depending on how much time I have!

I was left with three blocks - one is one I made myself, which had the same background as two others I made, so I didn't feel bad leaving it out. One is a free, extra "wrong" block one of the players sent me along with her correct blocks - the strips point outward instead of inwards. The third one, there is really nothing much wrong with - it is a tiny bit out on size in the upper right corner (but well within the margin of error) and had a similar background colour to a number of other blocks - and I needed to lose one more block, so it came out. These three will go in my orphans bag, and will either languish there until I use them for something, or, more likely, go with other orphans to a friend who has a quilt ministry and often can use spare blocks.

Cross stitch update

This is my second week on the Irises, and you can see the other two flower heads begin to come into shape - no backstitching this week, as I didn't really finish a suitable area for it - next time, I expect there will be loads to do, though. This coming week, I'll finish off the old fashioned sampler - not much to sew on it - and I have a couple of small things picked out to work on after that...

All four quarters together...

I've showed two quarters of this quilt as I assembled it in pieces, and I do have a photo of the third quarter, but as it's been fully assembled now, it seemed silly to post that. There have been a lot of positive comments on the layout, and although I hadn't necessarily planned to keep this one, I actually find myself inclined to do so- at least until someone is in need of a gift!

Rail fence assembled

Now here's a bank holiday for you - a morning spent sewing, followed by an afternoon sitting in the garden reading in the sunshine. What could be better?

I put together the taupe blocks for the rail fence (yes, I do need a design wall, but as I'm unlikely to get one in this current house, my design floor will have to do (and sometimes, my design bed)). I also put together a number of other tops - 6 more, I think - which means that my rather full basket of block sets now looks like this: 

OK, yes, there are still some blocks there, but it's a lot better than yesterday morning, when I started!

More rail fences - and more!

I finished up my Japanese taupe style rail fences today, which I really like the look of - I had lots of small pieces of these fabrics (I think at one point I was in a monthly club where I got 8ths or possibly 16ths) so this was really suited for using those pieces up. 

Then, I began to tackle my basket of block sets which want sewing together. I pieced together 5 different sets of tops today, and hope to tackle some more tomorrow - and of course, I shall tantalise you with them in the upcoming week...

More rail fence blocks

Because I can never resist making great blocks when I come across them, and because I had such fun with the scrappy rail fences, I decided to dig out my Japanese taupe (and taupe-style) fabrics and make some using those. I have a lot of small pieces of these fabrics, so they are well suited. The main challenge here is having enough contrast between the rails, so a little more coordination is called for, but I'm still not overthinking it...

Not many finished blocks yet, but lots in progress. Soon, I will have to have a period of sewing blocks together to make tops, but for the moment, I'm happy just piecing!

Bird ATCs

Other than the alphabet series, I haven't been making as many ATCs recently as I sometimes do, but I did join a bird themed swap (I can never resist bird themed swaps) and made this set of slightly vintage, feathery cards to trade. I was hoping to spell "wing" on one of them, but apparently, I have no "g's" at all in the alphabet stickers I was using. I always end up with letter which don't spell anything - or at least, which don't spell the words I want. Perhaps I should see what letters I have left and build cards around those rather than doing the cards first and hoping for the right letters...

New Old Quilt

This is a quilt which I made a long time ago - not sure how long - for Geoff's parents. It was on their bed for ages, and then, when Lucy moved into a home, it went with her to be on her bed there.  After the funeral last week, Stuart (Geoff's brother) gave us some of the belongings from Lucy's room, and this was one of them - he thought I might like to have it back.  I thought that was a lovely idea, so it's now with us as another snuggle quilt in our living room (I may have to remove something else from the basket in order for it to fit, though). It was always quite a pale quilt, but it's faded a lot - probably because their bedroom was very sunny, so it often sat in full sun. But I think quilts are made to be used, so that's not a problem, as far as I'm concerned, and I'm happy to have it back...

Cross stitch update

Good progress on the sampler - finished the main design, and a lot of the top section. One more week should finish it off. Back to the Irises next week, then I'll have to pull something else out of the box to put into the rotation... Wonder what it will be?

More tidying up

Another drawer tidied up - I didn't move much out of this one, just went through it to make sure it all belonged there and there wasn't anything to get rid of. The next drawer in this unit is a big one, and it's full of paper and stuff. Going to be harder to sort, perhaps. Might have to postpone clearing it out!

2nd quarter

Nope, it's not an American football game, it's the second set of 12 blocks from this block set - two more to go and then I'll be ready to piece together the 4 quarters...

More rail fences

Finished the rail fence blocks today - there are actually 30 of them, but I couldn't fit the other two in the photo because of the table in the hallway. Too lazy to move it!  Not sure this will be the final arrangement - there are a couple of places where the same fabric is fairly close to itself - I didn't use anything more than twice, I think, but I don't really want those instances right next to one another.

This was a remarkably easy block and very satisfying - I will definitely do another one at some point, probably with some sort of controlled colourway or FQ set. Not sure what yet. Perhaps with some of my Japanese taupe fabrics...

Scrappy Rail Fence Variation

I've enjoyed reading Tazzie's blog for some time and lately, have really been finding a lot of scrap quilting inspiration there. It was there where I found the little scrappy stars idea (though it's originally a Bonnie Hunter idea, as are so many great scrap quilts) and now, I've been sucked in by her lovely rail fence blocks she's been swapping. Hers co-ordinate with one another very well, as there was obviously discussion and agreement about the type of fabrics to use, but I reckon it will make a very nice set of totally scrappy blocks, too. Here are the first three I've made - at the moment, I'm aiming for 30, which should make a nice size quilt, not too big. We'll see when I'm done, I might do more or I might do some in a different colourway (or to be more precise, in an actual colourway rather than just in "what scraps do I have the right size". The only consistency in these blocks is that all the centres are the same, and I'm trying not to put any two fabrics next to one another which are too similar in colour or pattern - but it's a very simple control, basically just something like not putting two navy blues next to one another. Otherwise, it's whatever's at the top of the stack of strips!

ABC ATCs: Y & Z

And, as I am winding up (and as I don't have a lot of stuff hanging around to show as I haven't done a lot of work lately) I thought I'd finish off the alphabet series of ATCs.  You may have worked out that 26 is not divisible by 3, and we've been swapping in 3s - so our last set is y & z - that's including a card which says "and" or has some sort of and symbol on it (ampersand, plus, etc).   So I have a Yellow Y card

my "and" is some famous pairs

and Z, well, fairly obvious, except for the green stripes in the background, perhaps!

And that's the end of my alphabet. Perhaps I will get my act together and scan the alphabet I received, so you can all enjoy that one...

ABC ATCs: VWX

Coming to the end of the alphabet set of ATCs I've been swapping. Here are V for Vegetable, 

W for Witch

and for X, I went with X marking the spot - not so many words start with X (it wasn't a requirement of the swap that the illustration be a word starting with the letter, anyway, the card just had to use the letter on it somewhere...)

Cross-stitch update

As mentioned last week, I'm tired of Winter Wonderland and needed to stitch something different and less wintery. Enter these oriental Iris, a kit which I've had for ages. There's another one which goes with it, which is a poppy, I think - perhaps someday I'll get to that one.  in the meantime, I'm stitching up the Iris, and doing some of the backstitching as I go along, just so it's not all hanging over me at the end...

Quarter Quilt

Not a fat quarter quilt, mind you, which would be something different entirely...  I had loads (48) of these blocks, so this weekend I decided to start putting them together as leaders and enders for a while, to get some of my block stash sorted out. But 48 is a lot to have laid out at once to get the right order (can't trust myself to alternate left- and right-leaning blocks properly unless they are laid out to start with), so I started with 12...

and will do it three more times with these two piles of blocks.  Then I can join the quarters and have a quilt top to give away!