The last of the summer sewing

As the end of February draws near so does the 'official' end of summer.  I spent this last weekend of summer stitching on a number of projects.  I was going to go into the office and catch up on a couple of things (try and clear out my email) but I just couldn't face it when I had lovely quilty projects to play with.

First up a wonky star for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, in the 'proper' February colour way of *Brown with a touch of pink*.   Others will have lots more to show.  You can check out their chocolately goodness at the weekly linkup here.

This week's Project 48 Quilt block is my favourite.  Sometimes fabric combinations come together and you are reminded that this is why you quilt; this is one of those times!  Full credit to background print which I think does all the work here.

 

 I worked on my slightly neglected  Allietare Mystery Quilt.  Working out where I was up to wasn't so hard once I got started.  I stitched together all the 'extra' star blocks, and some of the pieces for the extra alternate blocks. 

And lastly, I worked on what I'm now calling my *Sew Along Sampler*.  I made this very tipsy Arkansas Traveler Block.  It is not meant to look wonky, but something went wrong when I was cutting and sewing 60 degree angles.  This means that is both wonky and small.  But I took Tim Gunn's MAKE IT WORK mantra to heart and this is my Tipsy Traveler.  

I have 10 blocks done now and I fell that they are starting to look a bit more cohesive.  I think that dark border (a coping strip to bring it up to size) might have to be narrowed down because it is very dominant.

My plan is that this will be a donation quilt for Foster Hope, a charity that supports children in foster care by providing all the things they don't have when they move into care.  In many cases they need pretty much everything from a toothbrush to clothes; a teddy bear to a school bag.  Foster Hope is a group that has lots of different ways for people to help, including making quilts.  So because I want this quilt to be for a child, I'm working on moving it away from the kind of weird scrappy look of some of the first blocks I made towards  bright colourful. 

(Hmmm... when I look at this photo, I'm not sure that fan block is square.  I might need to take a look at that.)

So that is my stitching for the last weekend of summer.  I hope that the warm weather continues, and that my productivity does too!

A new project

I just couldn't resist starting a new project.  The Project 48 Quilt is a an epic year long quilt sampler masterminded by Crystal McCann and Linden Vine.  I love that there is a mixture of traditional and improvised (or wonky) blocks. 

I'm trying to resist Pat Sloan's Splendid Sampler.  The idea of a sampler of 100 little 6 inch blocks really appeals.  Hmmmm....  watch this space.  I keep telling myself I still haven't put the RSC2014 Sampler together.  We'll just see how convincing I can be. 

A little scrappy catchup

So (or is that sew?) it has been a while I checked in on my blog and on the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  There are 2 reasons for that.  Firstly life got a little busy as DH and I because caught in in putting my Father-in-Law into care.  As he's in the South Island, that meant some travel and time away from home, and lots of organising and work to be done.

Secondly the colour for February is brown, and I just can't get excited about it so I've been procrastinating.  Today I finally decided to grow and up just sew a block and see what I thought.

I don't love it, and I haven't prepared any fabric to make more.  I still have a lovely wee stash of blue parts and am happily sewing away on blue blocks.  This is last progress photo I took.

I've probably said it before, but these blocks are so much fun to make.  It's quite simple sewing when anything else seems to hard, and after a while I find myself excited about having stitched, and ready to move onto something more challenging which I might not other otherwise have got into.

I hope next month's colour inspires me more than brown though LOL.

You can check out the much more enthusiastic RSC progress of others at SoScrappy's blog here