WIP Saturday

It's National Scrapbooking Day today but I seem to have gotten a wee bit confused because I spent it sewing!  But I have a good reason; I finally had both a fresh roll of thread and more importantly, time to sew thanks to the May Day long weekend.  In fact, I'm on day three of sewing, having spent the last two days at my friends' cottage working on various stitching projects.

Today I put together the final four blocks for my HST sampler quilt-along so I'm feeling very accomplished!

 Block #17

 Block #18

 Block #19

Block #20

Whew!  That's 20 quilt blocks now ready for squaring up and sashing tomorrow.  Then the fun of block placement begins.

I also finished off another milk carton woven basket.  This one in a smaller size (the size we've been making with my students at work) - 2x3 base and using orange juice cartons.  If you missed it, you can see my first basket here.

Not too shabby for a day's work.

WIP Wednesday

Do you ever just have days that floor you before you've even gotten out of bed?  Well, that's been my day today and it's still going (evil, I tell you).  So, I'm going to keep this short and simple.

Having run out of thread, I wasn't able to sew up my next two blocks for the layer cake sampler quilt-along.  Major pout.  However, here is a little preview of the 16 blocks so far:

I still need to do some playing around with block placement but you get the idea.  And, I've finally bought more thread so hopefully I can find time to work on those two blocks soon(ish).

Linking up to Freshly Pieced.

WIP Saturday

Since I was sitting on a train enjoying the Irish countryside between Dublin and Belfast on Wednesday, I didn't get around to sharing my most recent two layer cake sampler QAL blocks with you so here we go:

 Block #13

Not much to say about this one; bit of text and floral print paired together.

Block #14

This one is another of my favourites.  When I was a child, my mum told me I could decorate my room in whatever colours I wanted.  I chose pink and orange - together.  My mum refused, saying that those colours don't work together.  Clearly I was well ahead of my time because as we know today, pink and orange most certainly do live happily together and here's further proof.  So Mum, can we revisit that conversation, please?

Sewing these two blocks was something of a nail-biting experience, as I've been running out of my standard ecru Aurifil at an alarming rate.  I just barely made it:

Going to have to wait until next week when the quilt shop is open again before starting my next two blocks, which is thoroughly disappointing as I was really hoping to spend the afternoon sewing today.  But then again, I get to enjoy this instead:

So I really can't (and won't) complain.

WIP Wednesday

Another two blocks finished for my layer cake sampler quilt-along:

 Block #11

I really like this one - who doesn't feel happy looking at cheery pink, yellow and orange daisies?  And I was so thrilled to get all of the stripes matching.

Block #12

And a nice, sunny yellow and green print (with super cute sunflower print).

Linking up to Freshly Pieced:

WIP Wednesday

Two more new blocks to my layer cake sampler quilt-along project:

 Block #3

Just love how block #3 turned out!  I've loved that red and white print since the day I saw it and it pairs so nicely with the turquoise.  The perfect block for these prints.  Or is it the perfect prints for this block?

Block #4

I decided to use these two fabrics for this block because the green and white stripe print is a wee bit light against the white background and grouping them together helps give it more weight.  I also rather liked the symbolism of using a bird patterned fabric in the flying geese block and the green stripe makes me think of them flying over a mowed field.  Yeah, that's right, I'm just that silly.

Linking up to Freshly Pieced...

Quilt-Along...GO!

Hey, you!  I woke up this morning to a beautiful, clear blue sky (after a week and a half of on-again, off-again fog) and an itch to stitch!

After having finally cut out all of my 8" blocks and picking up some extra white background fabric, I set to work, joining in the Layer Cake Sampler Quilt-Along over at Material Girl.  I'm technically two weeks behind (possibly on the edge of three weeks behind) but not worrying about it in the least.  This isn't about 'keeping up' or deadlines, it's about creative therapy!

First two blocks are done and I finally got to really use my new little sewing corner - totally loving it!  Will definitely have to invest in more ambient lighting for the corner space in general but between the built-in machine light and an extra Ikea clip light, the throat-plate area of my sewing machine is very visible.

 Block #2

I actually did the blocks in reverse order, because I knew I had more of the above fabrics in case I muffed up somewhere along the line and I thought these would work really well with this block design.  Completely love the colour combination and how it turned out.

Block #1

And here's the second (first?) one.  I just love that adorable yellow daisy print and it has the finest hint of bold orange in it so it worked great with this orange leaf pattern.  I played with all three variations on this block but in the end I really liked this herringbone version best.

Tomorrow I'm off on a course to learn how to use milk cartons to make a woven basket.  Hoping I might be able to squeak out one more block after I get home from that.