Saturday, I finished the appliqueing of the bike blocks - still have to fuse down the other half of the blocks and then stitch them down. After I finished the bike blocks, I wanted to do something new and different; I found this OLD panel in my fabric storage room
and decided to cut around each block and make mug rugs. I had some blue that was close to what's between the blocks and I had a package of the batting used to keep things warm/cold ( can't think of the name of it right off) and so I got started on them.
The first three done... I machine stitched around, then turned them right side out and hand stitched the openings closed... THEN I decided that they need a little bit of quilting and I thought I'd try some 'big stitch' quilting and went & grabbed my bins of embroidery floss and sorted through trying to find colors that would go with the project. The red is almost a perfect match and the blue is pretty close, but unfortunately, there might not be enough to do all the blocks that I need it for - we'll have to cross our fingers and hope for the best. I did finish a nice purple that will work on the blocks with purple background.
All that hand sewing was hard on my finger - and it's been so long since I did any major amount of hand sewing so I have no idea where my thimble might be hiding.
Then came Sunday and, at least for the next few weeks, I'm declaring Sundays as Scrap days. A week ago yesterday, I made string blocks - yesterday, I wanted to do something different. I had been looking through one of my boxes of patterns ( yes, I have more than one lol) and re-found this book that I think I received as a gift
I get very frustrated at some of these books because they seem to call for fat quarters or 1/2 yard pieces... I don't call those scraps.
But as I'm looking through it, I find this pattern...
I have a love-hate relationship with log cabin blocks... it seems that no matter how I try, I cannot make a decent log cabin block unless I use paper piecing.... and look what this calls for.
While I was looking through the pattern box, I also found a brand new pack of Carol Doak's papers for paper piecing... they go right through your printer. All I had to do was print two blocks and then tape them onto one piece of paper and then start printing.
I then grabbed a bucket/bin of scraps and the ice cream bucket that holds my white scraps and started sewing.. after the first two stitches, I even remembered to shorten my stitches.
Here are the first two:
The quilt in the pattern is small... 40" x 48"... I don't think I want to stop at that size; I think I'll keep going - I think I'd like closer to 60" x 60". I think I made 6 yesterday - and I think if I give myself a year and just do them when either the mood strikes me or the scraps overwhelm me, that should be just fine. I'm not in a rush on this project - just want to use up scraps.
No progress on the penguin flannel quilt(s) yet... other than I ordered some solid red and solid white flannels that should arrive in about a week. They are from the same company (Kaufman) so hopefully the red will match. Once I have them, then maybe I can start playing with blocks pretty much like I did with The Booth Brothers quilts - measure the blocks I have and then make other blocks to fit.
In the meantime, I'm going to try and get back to working on the autumn quilt that's STILL on the frame waiting for me to finish it now that my eyes are fixed.
Ok, Buddy is bugging me to go to bed... darned spoiled dog anyway lol
take care....
ttyl....
No comments:
Post a Comment