The Last Day of October

One of the books I have on order is a sampler book of japanese taupe blocks.  After a quick squiz of a friends, I was (a) inspired to order the book and (b) reminded of how I love the subtleness of these fabrics and my grand plans of yet another quilt.  It was also time to do my last row for the round robin.  Stars aligned and I found a great grouping of fabric to match the existing rows, and made me realise that actually I had quite a few of the japanese taupes fabrics, certainly enough to get started with the block of the month pattern I bought ages ago, anyway.

So the little stem I started to illustrate the bias stem tutorial (part of block one) got pulled out again, and after a bit of ferriting, ironing, messing around... I started to accumulate the components for the first block.

The stem with some new leaves and berries

The bluebird block... not sure if the bird fabric is quite right, but
we'll see how it goes...

The rest of the block components... still need to finish
the blanket stitch fusible applique, and join them together.

A lot of this quilt has been pieced from scraps so far - and I really mean scraps.  Strange little triangles, odd strips remaining from other projects... it's really fun remembering why you bought it in the first place, and what quilt it has been in already.  Of course, I will need to buy more fabric...

And this led me to pull out one of my other hairbrained schemes to use up scraps... an applique quilt using invisible machine applique and using a mix of scraps that fit into a completely different colour scheme.

A couple of blocks from My whimsical Quilt Garden pattern

I've decided that I am going to do one block from each pattern each month.  We shall see how longs this committment lasts!  After the experience I have gained from round robins this year, that is: deciding you are going to complete a small portion of a larger quilt with a monthly deadline; I have great confidence that I should at least get some of them done.

Now, back to the round robin row.  I have to be very discrete because this month I've been working on Ms Lottie's, so I can't give too much away.  If you've been keeping track of her blog too, you'll remember her original row:

And this months theme was birds and bees...

You'll just have to use your imagination!  There is not however
any nudity (although are the birds wearing clothes??)

And my great pride in being almost caught up with my stitch-along has returned to the plodding along stage - situation normal.  Week Four almost finished:

Just a few more letters, a star and a heart... very cute!

Are you any closer to finishing any projects?

Maybe I should call this blog "An ongoing list of projects and ideas that are started and never finished".