The Importance of Correct Nostril Placement

A bit of background history... every two years my kids primary school have a week long trip to the snow for the year 5 and year 6 students... this involves a whole heap of fundraising throughout the whole school.  This year it is Nadia's turn for the snow trip (which starts on Monday), and hence fundraising activities have taken over our lives where we have been able to assist.

Baking seems to be a year long activity... and baking for the big inter-school cross country running event meant double the planning.  Monday afternoon was spent baking the cookies, and then Tuesday was spent decorating them.  I had done these before, so I knew that they would sell the decorated cookies for $1 each... we made about 40, so well worth the effort.

We had piggies...

And cows...

Four boxes of the danged things...

Needless to report, they all got sold!

Sewing during the week was a bit of a washout... so Saturday has been my playing around day.

I cut another Starburst Cross quilt block.  It's funny that I almost never have yellow in my stash.  So I specially bought a few yellows a while back, just in case.  This was one of those yellows and it is just perfect.

So far the 4.5" units are pieced, but not joined to each other.

And the detail of the print.  Yum.

A handful of seams and I have my second finished Sugar Club Block jumbo sized.

I love.

... working on the chain... gang!

While it has not quite been a hive of activity, the sewing cave has been productive.

My Sugar Block Club BOM project is ticking along... so far one block is complete, one block has one final side needing its triangles applied, another block needs its first triangle border added, and another block is about halfway through it's borders being applied. Then there is the pile of blocks and triangles that are still awaitng something being done to them :o)

I finished sewing block nine... not my favourite, as it has turned out a bit big.. points will be cut off to make it the right size.

The Starburst Cross quilt is quietly gaining momentum.  This block has a bit of a quieter feel.

The star fabric is part of the range, while the pale teal is a stash addition.  Yummo!  I am officially in love with this text/post fabric.

And OK, I love these fabrics too.

This floral just reminds me of a 1950's housedress... not that I've ever actually seen a housedress, 1950's or otherwise.

And so on...

Somehow starting a new project has helped unleash the floodgates of my patchwork creativity.  It's funny, because I was hesitant to start a completely new project in case I didn't maintain any interest in it... when in fact, a new project has helped spark progress in other existing projects.  Go figure.

So new project progress... I've cut a few new sets of stars, and got a few units pieced.  In my original block I pressed the corner triangle sections towards the triangle.  This resulted in units that didn't butt together - but instead once sewn, they merged and somehow crossed over.  Perhaps seeing the units before sewing would help illustrate what I obviously can't verbalise:

Sewn together, the units intersect and if you hit that magic 1/4" sweet spot, the two pieces match perfectly.  This seemed to be working fine, and I had sewn a second block before I realised that the problem would be with joining the blocks together - where the grey triangles met, and both were pressed in the same direction.

Two options here - either press half the blocks with the triangle seams away from the triangle, or press those seams open.  Option number two was the choice of the day.

And the view from the back with the open seams... looks very streamlined.  I haven't finished this trial block yet, but from the seams sewn so far, there are 5 perfect out of 6.  One was a bit dodgy, but permissible.

Also on the agenda has been my  Amy Gibson Sugar Club block BOM.  I have been busyish sewing triangles to add to the setting/sashing, but haven't sewn any of the actual blocks in ages.  Time to remedy that - after all, with my new setting idea I only needed 9 blocks so that was two more than what I had.

I really like this block :o)  I could imagine it made with charm squares as the centres, and then something a bit modern in the corners - maybe a mix of greys, so that when you set it with sashing and corner stones, you'd end up with a churn dash design happening as a secondary pattern.  Oh yeah, I can picture it now.  Luckily I don't seem to have any suitable charm packs waiting for new adventures...

I've done something screwy and have a bit of bowing in a couple of seams.  Oops... hopefully being sewn together will help it to behave.

What, August already?

So the school holidays came and went... as did the first week back at work/school.  I celebrated another birthday... and spent a delicious morning stitching at my favourite patchwork shop, and doing a touch of fabric shopping.

So, something new on the drawing board.  I've been feeling like I need some repetitive sewing, something going on in the background of all the sampler blocks I've got cluttering my work space.

Starburst Cross Quilt Pattern by Sew Crafty Jess.

This particular pattern has been sitting around for a while, and I even had the idea of using a particular fat quarter bundle of Adornit fabric that had also been sitting around for a while.  Well at least since 2014 when it was on my WIP list as fabric without a project.  I think that using fabrics from one range will lend itself to this quilt pattern quite well.

I really like the depth of the pattern in the fabrics... much more than just a simple design.

So, I've started.  To make the quilt square, I have added another 5 fabrics from my stash to the original 20 fat quarters, and bought a lovely soft grey Bella Solid as the background.  I also plan to add a wide plain border to bring the quilt size up to about 72" square. 

I also wanted to experiment with alternative construction methods to the stitch and flip corner triangle method and have trialed using paper templates for the odd shaped pieces.

Block One done and dusted.

My initial concerns about this block included the matching of the star points and the corner units.  Damn those pesky diagonal seam convergences... but so far so good - they are behaving themselves.