A hiccup.

The moral of today's post-don't trim your quilt at night in poor lighting without your glasses especially when the fabric is black!  Doh. Fold on the corner perfectly sliced through!

What a pain! I wanted to hand sew the binding last night so I did most of it and left this corner until this morning. 

Insert new binding on corner. Fiddly.

 This was my first free motion scribbly filler, it didn't turn out too bad.  Using neutral thread in case it was awful meant that I couldn't really see what I had already sewn. Catch 23. 

The border is my  all purpose border filler, a very forgiving pattern, especially when you use matching variegated thread on scribbly fabric!  I need to work on a consistent stitch length.

I am calling this  a finish for today as I only have to sew down a few inches of binding. Charity quilt for Linus, about 40" square.  

These are  orphan blocks from 'The Big Green One'

Verbose backing, my favourite kind. 

This week I have pieced some flimsies for charity quilts.

Borders are recycled fabric, but you would never know. 

 Another hiccup that I am calling a deliberate block placement-it wasn't until I took the photo that I saw the red corner block was the wrong way round, but as the fabric says BLAH I am calling it a design feature!

Leftover blocks from 'Kiss in the Corner', with a wide binding, for a larger charity quilt. 

And another, this on has leftover grey strips on the border from  'Moth in a Window'

I used the burgundy block settings that I unpicked from the leftover 'Sisters Choice' blocks for the border. 

Orphan blocks , a larger Linus flimsy. White with orange scrappy border. 

And another. That uses up all but one random broken dishes block!

Crabby border fabric-you can find a use for everything! 

Orphans

 Today I put the borders on this charity quilt

 The blocks were leftovers from this

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Then I found orphan blocks left over from Sisters Choice

I put borders all the way round 12 of them, they will be place mats. Not my usual colour at all, but I can practice my free motion on these -I got a super slider for Christmas.  There were enough for a table runner too.

 I raided the batting and pieced 12 squares for the mats. Not enough left for the runner at the moment.

 The last one used six pieces!

 ***

I have been working on these, that finish at 6"

There were some 2" pieces of red left: I have fallen in love with my easy angle ruler (new toy) so I tried smaller ones out......

 ....and so I have started a leader ender project! These will finish at a teeny 3"

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Then I put borders on this..........

 and this......

and this for more charity quilt flimsies.

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 I pieced a scrappy neutral backing for orphan Moth in a Window  blocks for a charity quilt that I made up about 6 months ago. 

***

 I unpicked the burgundy borders from a row of Sisters choice blocks that didn't make it into the main quilt or the table mats

 and there were just enough for another charity quilt.  It will need another border when it it pressed.

I felt like I hadn't achieved much today as I worked on rounding up orphans for lots of things rather than one project, but I guess things are more organised now.  I have thirteen charity quilts from orphan blocks to quilt!  Super slider practice, here I come.

Made it!

Last Xmas present done!

Purging the greens and planning a new learning curve

 I have made 395 green/brown pinwheels for two projects from the pre-cuts.

 There were a lot of two patches and four patches over from The Big Green One. 

 The four patches were dubious, so I made them into 240 six patches, I have a plan for these. 

 I made 347 4 patches from the remaining two patches, with greens that are better matched in each block, to be put by for a future project TBC.

A lot of the two patches have been hand sewn,  I took them on holiday about 5 years ago!  It made for very easy seam spinning of 395 sets.

I used some of the very odd four patches, (here the centre blocks are really brown and yellow!) to make scrappy nine patches to join the pile of over 100 I have already.

Thirty seven of these made, you can't really tell they contain a green/neutral four patch.







I have  chain sewn sets of triangles  for Box Kite, to be pressed:  I  made 14  blocks so far.  I really like this block. The top centre one doesn't fit with the others as the blue is too pale. There will be enough for at least two quilts, so I can sort them into tone block types when they are all done.

I also did a few Perkiomen Daydreams blocks.  I will be pressing the ones I have to check the accuracy (it's difficult to determine without a press as they finish at 1"). If I am not happy  I will abandon this project. I can't work out why my pinwheel accuracy is almost always spot on, but simple squares seem wonky.  This is Bonnie's  block and its perfect! 





I have been investigating one block wonder quilts. They are not a difficult to construct as I thought, helpful videos found on Youtube.    Bruce Seeds's Flickr page shows some informative pictures about fabric choices.



I found these in my stash, good quality fabrics bought at silly sale prices as backing.










I also bought  several metres in the sale from Lady Sew and Sew ( UK), one of my favorite online shops, of this Makower fabric that I think will do well, lots of colour and shape variation. Don't know about the size of the print yet, as it hasn't arrived!

I stashed some ideas on my Pinterest page too.

Green flashes

Some of the brown and green triangles left from The Big Green One

 that I have been chain piecing, now pressed.............

............... and sorted into sets of four: the sets are also going round the block on the machine table!

Now chain piecing the pinwheels.There is a mess of clipped dog ears on the floor!

I had four patches left too-now made into 72 sets 16 patches .  I will be making two quilts using the pinwheels. The ugly greens in this one need a zing, I'm thinking of setting these 'dancing' with red. It will make up a second quilt to go on the back of The Big Green One-should make for interesting free motion quilting!

The Big Green One, minus border

Discoveries and Excess

A couple of months ago I finished the top (no borders yet!) for 'The Big Green One'. It took ages as I was never in love with the colours and kept putting it aside.  It will look OK with a red border, I have decided. 

 Leftovers: lots of triangles.  Lots. So I am making up some pinwheels and for x four patches, using my seam guide on this machine for the first time. Accuracy much better!

. I still need to mindlessly sew to de-stress, so this fits the bill for now. Pinwheels will finish at 6". 

I have a design in my head-for this I need geese. I have to work on the accuracy, this practice strip with randoms from the stash bin is 1/4" plus longer on one side, so it must be about my piecing.   I will try some more today to get it right.

Liking these colours. 

I have done a few Perkiomen Daydreams leader-ender blocks-hoping the seam guide improves my accuracy here to. 

I found a random bin that I had stuffed things into-these were another attempt to use up all my strings-scrappy meandering braids.

 Yards and yards!

I found a pattern on pinterest that I can use them for

Genius!

 

 

But- no!  I found some more strings too, just when I thought I had cracked it and used every last one up!!

I also rediscovered these blocks- they only need laying out and putting together-a job for the next wet weekend.

One of Bonnie's patterns-she had been keeping me company on Quiltcam archive.