Moving forward...slowly

Post delayed by technical hitch - couldn't find where the latest photos had been hidden...  Rather a hotch-potch of things going on the past ten days, so let's start with a finish:


I finally made a cover for my Bernina sewing machine using the leftover pieced triangles from my Hexagon honeycomb quilt (posted here).  I do have a hard case for my Bernina but since the machine is set up almost all the time, the case doesn't get used.  Now I have a cover, at least the poor thing won't get quite so dusty.  So glad to use up the last few bits from that project and move on to the next thing....








I assembled this Double Irish Chain top from blocks I pieced a few weeks ago while piecing the Anvil blocks posted about here.  Having had to cut into the Fig Tree Buttercup Layer Cake and Jelly Roll because I needed a few more Anvil blocks, I felt I should use up the remaining fabric quickly.  So 2 1/2" strips became 2 1/2" squares and 10" squares were chopped up too, letting me enjoy a few hours of randomly chain piecing them all back together again - hooray!





















The background fabric is Kona Solid  in Snow from Simply Solids, my new favourite neutral for a clean, fresh look that isn't too bright a white.

The blocks are 10" finished, making the quilt top 70" square, and, yes, I do have a backing already to hand. Next week if I have a clear space of more than about 20 minutes (this week has been impossible) I will layer and start cross hatching this one: utility quilting for a very traditional quilt.

Alongside these two new projects with new (-ish) fabric, I felt I should tackle an old UFO.  So I dragged out the bag of bits from a class I did in 1998 (!!!!) with Sharon Chambers at The Quilt Room.  From a book by  Margaret J. Miller called Strips that Sizzle, the idea was that I would get to grips with ideas about colour and value.  Well, I have to say that it was all a bit beyond me then, but I really loved cutting up lots of different fabrics in two colour families and stitching the strips back together again.  Sound familiar?  

I discovered that I had actually made quite a few blocks (82 to be precise) in teal/navy and shades of fuchsia pink, and that I had a small amount of extra fabric tucked away in the bag.  I was reluctant to bin it - but the stitching was pretty ragged ...

So I grabbed my trusty Bloc_loc square ruler and trimmed all 82 blocks down to 5" square- very satisfying, to see the pile of trimmings and the apparently pristine (if you don't look at the backs) pile of squares.  I set the squares out on a design wall in a barn raising layout (copied from my favourite quilt from the very many in the book) and then found I was short of 18 blocks for the required 10 x 10 block setting.

I fiddled about and pieced a few more from all the scraps, and then decided that what it needed was a pieced border in the blues and greens (a design decision driven by having run out of the pinks by this stage...).

So, in between everything else, and when I should have been doing many other things, I have enjoyed playing about with strips, and been entertained by my choice of fabrics from the old days!  Hope to show you more next week.

 Finally, a few shots of Spring flowers in my garden: you can see I love purple and blue!