WIP Wednesday

I can't believe it's Wednesday again already!  Things have been progressing with my Ricky Tim's Harmonic Convergence wall hanging.  I still have the top border to sew back on - something's gone wonky with the measurements so it's been giving me a spot of trouble but I'm sure I can work it out.  I'm taking a bit of a break from that right now and yesterday I picked up some new supplies for a few smaller projects that I've been meaning to do for a long time now.  I'm hoping to start them sometime later this week.

I thought I'd also share a WIP my quilt guild is working on.  Last year we decided that we should make a whole guild quilt where every member contributes a block.  Our Danish sister guild has done this and it's really neat to see everyone's interpretation of a theme.  Our theme was Mitt Skåne ("My Skåne"; Skåne being the province in which we live).

At first I wasn't sure what to do and then I found this great poppy fabric that kick-started my imagination.  You see, wild poppies aren't something I grew up with in my area of southern Ontario but they're everywhere over here in summer - through all the fields and in all the ditches along the roadsides in the country, so for me they're very European.

I decided that I wanted my block to be 3-dimensional; something that I'd never tried before.  I started with sewing some pale green scraps together in narrow stripes to mimic the tall, dried summer grass that often surrounds wild poppies.  Then I set about embroidering on some stem work, fussy cutting flower heads and stitching tiny seed beads - many, many seed beads - and came up with this:

Recently the committee responsible for this project at guild posted an update on how joining all of the blocks is coming along.  It's been decided that instead of making one enormous quilt, we'll make three or four smaller ones that will be more manageable.  And here is an update photo that includes my block (second row from the top, last block on the right):

I think only one other person used poppies in her block so I was pretty original.  Willow trees, bicycles, rape seed fields, white geese and The Little Mermaid statue (technically in Copenhagen) were all very popular motifs among the blocks.  It's going to be such fun to see when they're all finished!

I also whipped up a quick birthday card today for my uncle.  I had planned on making some candles out of paper straws but all the shops were out of them yesterday so I just decided to use my current go-to birthday card design.  It's always handy to have a design that you know you can easily fall back on when you're feeling rushed or tired or a birthday sneaks up on you unawares.

Birthday Wishes Card

This stamp set is by Technique Tuesday and I use it regularly.  It includes a variety of sentiments, as well (birthday, anniversary, good luck, get well soon) so it's quite flexible and you can mix and match as you want.  I use mine with heat embossing powders so that it really stands out on my papers.  The 2Peas store no longer carries this stamp set but you might still find it elsewhere if you look around.

So what you are currently working on?