Where one thing leads to another

I started these school holidays with a real cleaning and reorganising whirlwind.  Part of this was moving furniture in my lounge, and shifting my craft bookcase from a hallway to prime location centre stage in the lounge.

Having the books so accessible has encouraged me to pick one up now and then and browse.  One of those books was this one, Utility Style by Sharon Holland.

And although i can't admit to remembering this particular quilt, this time it really stood out.  And ideal quilt for Dylan... interesting, bold, traditional and a little bit quirky.

My pet peeve about quilt books is not showing a full shot of the finished quilt, although a diagram is better than nothing... I suppose.  The second partial picture is at the end of the book illustrating the quilting instructional section.

And these are the fabrics I have narrowed down for it.  I am not 100% confident that i have the correct quantities needed... but I am confident I can make it work.

My design wall had become overcrowded with projects which was starting to stall progress on multiple projects.

Firstly I laid the timeless traditions quilt back on the design floor because it really has just got too big to manage on the wall, and I feel like I need to see all of it to make applique fabric decisions.  This project keeps getting passed over on my To Do List so I am hopeful that this will aid in getting some more done on it.

Moving the log cabin blocks for the moment means I can work on This Little Piggie and the Bursting Star pattern without too many problems.  These look so pretty together.

I cleared some items off the wall space next to my sewing area, and set up a smaller secondary design wall - just some batting pinned up to the Hessian board a bit over 1m square.  Woohoo.  I think I'll start laying out the beginning of Dylan's quilt here.

And that's about it.  My two weeks of supposed holiday means 7 of those days spent at work, and one day with the car at the garage.  Let's just say I'm not looking forward to going back to work on Monday.  Not surprisingly, I also haven't finished the cleaning and reorganising...

Practically a mid month check in

Wow... once again time has just flown along.  I have been plugging away with Meadowland column construction, and finally have a finished top ready for bed top measurements!

 and pondering Dash to the finish border options,

I used the fabric provided in the kit for binding to make this green pieced border.  It was always my intention to carry these triangular shapes into the border.

And I am currently angsting over whether to cut into this exquisite floral to create a final wider border.

Still a tiny bit small on the bed.

I have been playing with fabric selections for a quilt for Dylan.  Almost 16, he has actually asked for a quilt after lots of years of duvet usage.  What can a quilt mama do??

I have had this fat quarter for a number of years just waiting for the right project.

I am slowly accumulating coordinates... not quite there yet... but very close.

Now that my design floor is clear I could start playing with some layouts.

Meadowland

My Meadowland journey started when I succumbed to the thrill of the sew along...  back in March.

I fell in love with this cute hedgehog fat quarter  (thanks Susan 😉) and created a broad selection of fabrics to pull out those gorgeous colours... light and dark neutrals and some fun pops of colour.

Now, months after the sew along finished I have still been plugging away making blocks.  Originally I intended to sew 25 blocks which made a 80 inch square quilt.  Sewing block number 20 has made me realise that I'm not 100% in love with this quilt... although I'm not entirely sure why.  I still love this palette... and maybe a layout that followed the progression of colours as opposed to sprinkling all of the colours all round would have looked better.  The benefit of hindsight 😎

Anyway, I had always in the back of my mind wondered whether I would add sashing to this quilt, really just as a way of aiding the construction process.  Laying out the blocks yesterday, I contemplated how things would look laid out in columns with a wide vertical sashing... a 5 x 4 layout with sashing and borders to make up the difference in size.  Not too shabby!

One of my loves about the original quilt is the way the blocks kind of blend into each other.  You definitely lose this aspect by adding sashing (although you gain a cool secondary pattern when you add cornerstones), but the vertical only sashing still gives a similar impression, but without it being totally all over the place. Another bonus of the sashing is that it doesn't matter how you press!

A bit more of a play around with the colour dispersal... the blacks in particular needed to be evenly spaced, but also the apricots, blues, and really just about all of the fabrics needed to be spread around.

These two greens on the same row were the least of my worries... and signalled it was time to just start sewing these babies together.

The first column has been sewn already so onwards and upwards.

More Little Piggies

One thing I did make good progress with in August was my This Little Piggie BOM.

It's always such fun choosing fabrics for the details.

This family looks like its going to the county fair...

Six blocks down... three to go.  September is about getting three blocks blanket stitch done.

The finish of crappy August and start of hopefully better September

August was a month of mostly procrastinating and a few days of excellent progress.  I think I managed to tick off 4 of 7 tasks.  So not a complete loss.

With plenty of projects on the go, and needing to choose something to keep me occupied at my monthly stitching group, this seemed the ideal time to start something completely new!

Thimble Blossoms patterns / Camille Roskelley ran a sew along of this pattern and I bought it while it was on special... although the sew along came and went without any participation on my part.  The Sweet Escape pattern is based on a log cabin design and designed for a honey bun (like a jelly roll but with 1 1/2in strips).  Camille did a version with subtle neutral and navy stripes and I was in love!

 I had selected a fat quarter pack of modern backgrounds by Zen Chic... and loved they way they played with some greyed navies and indigo Essex Linen in my stash... and the rest is history.  A few more fabric purchases then my collection sat for several months waiting for a break in the lineup.

Finally...

Two blocks became four... and its starting to look like something.

It is very out of my comfort zone to work with so few colours... but I'm loving the effect.  This will be a very Zen quilt... just a few more million blocks 😂 and it'll be done.

The importance of mini goals

After patting myself on the back for being so organised, August has been passing me by with barely a skerrit of progress.  Although I jotted down some monthly goals... I neglected to write down any mini goals... resulting in almost nothing being achieved.  Some of this I will blame on winter and rain and cold and general dreariness.  Some of it is just poor planning and minimal motivation.

So, this weekend it all changed and I wrote those goals... And you know what?  Quite a lot of them happened!

Last weekend I got partly through the next This Little Piggy block...

And it took most of the week to decide on chicken colours and get some eyes and nostrils on the cow... And decide on block backgrounds and placements.

Filling up nicely.

So the mini goal for the next block was to trace the elements.  Done!  And you know what... it was pretty easy to do the trunk... then the tree... the piggies were a bit more detailed, but in the end not really that much work.  And look, another block ready for blanket stitch.

Now we're really getting somewhere!

Oops, forgot the sun!  This is going to be positioned partly outside the block so is not attached until the sashing and borders are completed.

Also on the agenda was to cut another Meadowland block ready to stitch up during the week. 

And to start piecing the Dash to the Finish quilt into rows.  Row 1 is done.

I have started construction of Nadias half square triangle quilt and have been using this as an intermittent leader and ender project.  My goal for this month is to get this bottom left third constructed.

Just need a few more half square triangles to fill in the blanks! 

I may be sick of half square triangles by the end of this one 😂

As July slides into August...

The start of August means that another birthday has been celebrated over this last week.

I had ordered some fabric at the end of June which finally arrived... must have been having a pretty fabric moment while I was ordering, because it is very PRETTY AND FLORAL!

Yellow is not one of my go to colours, but I am trying to buy it more frequently and especially when I see one that i actually like!

These two belong to the same range.  Love me some dots.

These two greens and the pink are from the same range, although the light background floral stripe fits in very nicely with it.

And this was a remnant... Love it!

I got 4 yards of this rich orangey red floral.  I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do with it, but it had to be bought!

I also spent some money at my local shop The Country Yard, adding to my fat 1/4 and 1/8th collection and got some notions as well... new pins, a small square ruler and a hem gauge.

This fabric has a nice selection of fun and neutral colours to match up with.

Hmmm... these all work in nice together.  And see that yellow, already working its way in.

Choosing fat 1/8ths is like picking candy...