A few more birdies

There are still a few more to arrive, but here's the latest group...  I do really love these birds - not sure how I am going to put them together into a quilt, though - will have to have a think about it!

More blocks assembled

Here's another top I put together in my recent push to get my block sets into tops - this was scrappy centres bordered in neutral fabrics. Again, fairly quick to put together and creates a nice, scrappy quilt. I still have a few more to show - which is good, as I don't seem to be doing much sewing at the moment!

Cross-stitch goodies

I mentioned recently that I joined a new monthly cross-stitch club - these are the Little Sheep Virtues (from Little House Needleworks) - one per month in 2013, quite small, all with sheep and all with virtues. 

As the programme had started already, my initial parcel had three virtues in it - Hope, Love and Peace. I should get one more virtue approximately every month (because it's imported from the US, occasionally there are customs-related delays) until we've reached 12.  I will obviously be a bit behind for a little while, but they are small and look quite quick to stitch, so probably not for long. 

I have opted to turn them into individual pieces, with the coloured felt, partly because it looks pretty and partly because it's different from a lot of my pieces. 

I won't start the first one for a while - it's back to the Irises this week, and then the little Spring Sampler needs finishing. And then I have another installment of the Faith birds - but soon, perhaps, I will get to the sheep!

Cross-stitch update

A finish!  The sampler is done - it was fairly quick to stitch - I think the most time was spent working out how to space the letters of my name...

It was nearly done, anyway - you can see where it finished last time.

The next project in this week of the rotation is this little house, part of a seasonal sampler - I've done the Autumn and Winter ones, and now just have the Spring and Summer ones.  I actually have several new cross-stitch pieces waiting for me - the next bird in The Flock (the birds on the pink fabric) has arrived, and some parts to a new series I've signed up to; I'll show them later, perhaps tomorrow. 

Here's what the Spring Sampler will look like once finished. 

Big Flock of Birds

I should probably buy some lottery tickets, as I seem to be going through a run of good luck -

I have won the block lotto twice now, in three months.

And this time, I only made one bird, so I had a single chance in the drawing.

Don't get me wrong, I liked the low-volume hearts that I won in February, but these birds I more than like - 

I adore them. 

I haven't received quite all of mine yet - I think about 4 or 5 more sets to come - 

but aren't the ones I have so far wonderful?

Every time I open a new package, I have a new favourite.

Though I have to say, I really like the legs on the top one in this photo - black and white stripes - very cool.   It may not be my favourite birds, but I think he has my favourite legs.

Somewhere, too, there's the one that I made for the lotto, which I am keeping to add to the flock. 

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?