Paper pieced block and a circle

In the last few days I found some some of my mojo and motivation to work on a couple of projects. Firstly I tackled January's paper pieced block by Katy from The Littlest Thistle. I had the devil of a time with this one. It wasn't Katy's fault at all. I just had brain fog when I was making it. I think I'll use this one as a test block and try again. Considering it's paper pieced there are some decidedly wonky lines in this block.


The Amitie Circle Game block.  I can't believe I hadn't bothered to make this block below already. It was dead easy, although I took the liberty of making it my way and not Jenny's way in the pattern.  Instead of making templates for the strips and then hand sewing them together, I used a ruler and rotary cut the strips longer than was needed. Sewed the strips together, then made a template of the circle block from the pattern provided, and cut around it to get the circular shape, using a rotary cutter. So easy, and no stress, hmm, well almost no stress. It would have been quicker if I double checked and not cut out the strips first time around 1/2 inch too thin.

The third strip from the right is a very light cotton voile. The fabric that was sent out each month was very varied. Generally quilting cotton but sometimes voiles or linens. I find the voiles are quite difficult to hand sew as they are "slippery". I've been avoiding using them but as this block was machine sewn I thought I should use at least one.

This block is so far out of my controlled scrappy comfort zone, I'm not in love with it. I've already chosen the fabrics for the next block and you will see that they are much more controlled.

Tonight, I'm going to be watching TV whilst working on those pesky starflowers.

Rachael's House

Quite some time ago, the lovely Rachael from Blue Mountain Daisy asked if anyone would like to make a house block for her. I jumped at the chance and said yes I'd love to. A few months later, I still hadn't made anything for her. Not for the want of trying, every couple of weeks I'd play with my stash and look at fabrics I might like to use. I searched the internet and my books for a paper pieced house block that I would like to make and that I had the skill needed to get it right, but I couldn't make up my mind. Then I saw this, Leila from Where The Orchid's Grow had designed a paper pieced, very cute, house block.

Image from Leila's blog

I purchased it, it's available as a PDF download.

Roll on another couple of weeks of rummaging in my stash to find just the right fabrics to use, in between getting my house ready.

Finally. Yesterday was a horrible cold wet and grey day, just perfect for staying in my pyjamas, something I haven't done for a very long time. I decreed that yesterday was a "ME" day and I was going to sew. No housework. No doing anything else at all, just sew or blob. I finished quilting a quilt that I started a month or two ago and sewed on the binding to the front of the quilt, leaving the hand sewing to do in the evenings. (Photos in a future post.)  Then I decided it was about time to make this house block.  I have done very little paper piecing. A couple of stars in the Mystery Quilt with Sheila, that's still in my WIP pile, and I had a great time making a couple of blocks with Katy at The Littlest Thistle who ran Foundation Piecing For The Terrified, perfect for me, as I was terrified of PP. I haven't touched paper piecing since, and now I'm attempting to make a cute paper pieced house, crazy.  I took a look at the pattern and thought, hmm, it doesn't look too hard.  I started on the roof, and the first couple of pieces were great, that gave me confidence until the third piece. First time I put it on upside down, took it off and then sewed it on wonky.  I made the executive decision to keep going as I thought if I fiddled around with it too much now, I would give up and go and cry. It wasn't too bad, just not perfect for little old Miss Perfectionist, me.
The rest wasn't a breeze but I didn't make too many mistakes nor get the seam ripper out more than a couple of times. I was very pleased with how it was all coming together, until I had to piece the pointy bits of the picket fence.  I cut out all the bits for it, then after sewing the first seam, I made another executive decision to make the fence railings flat topped.   I know when to stop!

So here's my house block for Rachael, courtesy of the very cute pattern from Leila. Hearts on the chimneys.


Some Jennifer Paganelli for the facia


The yellow brick path, right to the front door.


A peek inside, I think she may have had a wild party on the weekend.


And there's Rachel, she's been using the GHD and straightened her hair!


I really enjoyed making this, but one thing I noticed, going through my stash, I have very few small print fabrics. I either have lots of solids or large prints. Must. rectify. that.

Organising, bats and geese

Im going to get on my soap box and whinge. I know it's wet season here, and in the last few years, March has been notorious for a lot of rain, but I'm over it. Well and truly over it.  In the last couple of days we've had another 110+ mm of rain, yep that's another 6 inches. That takes it to over 400mm (almost 16 inches) in 13 days. Sunshine? Paradise? my @ɹ$€, no sunshine and it's definitely not paradise when everything is damp and going mouldy.

OK off my soap box now.

I've been de-cluttering, and will be for the foreseeable future, as it's slow going.  More photos to come eventually.
My sewing room.

A partial tidy up. So far, my yarn stuffed in the shelves, fat quarters in Samla boxes and yardage jammed carefully placed in shelves, and Karma, surprised that there is carpet in this room, not just fabric and crap all over the floor.
It's going to look crap again very soon, as this room is going to be painted this week, so I have to move everything to the centre of the room and cover it with drop cloths and then move it all back again, yuck!

During the week I had a visitor. I had one of these last year too, lucky aren't I. I'm glad I'm not the type to freak out at having a bat flying around my house.

Sorry the photos aren't great, I may not have been screaming like a girl when the bat came in, but I wasn't about to get up close and personal with it either.  This time the cats and dog didn't notice it, so I shut them in the bedroom, opened all the outside doors and crossed my fingers that it would find it's own way out. It did, phew! You may remember that last year I woke up in the middle of the night to the gentle noise of a bat flying into the rotating ceiling fan above my bed and being flung across the room into the wall. No harm was caused to the bat. This time it was because I forgot to shut the screen doors before dark.

On the sewing/crafty front, I worked on another block for Foundation Paper Piecing For The Terrified. Katy has posted some fab tutorials and I can genuinely say I'm no longer terrified of paper piecing. I'm still not sure whether I love it enough to make a whole paper pieced quilt but I'll certainly feel confident to give it a go to make smaller things like potholders or pincushions. On the other hand I've wanted to try a pickle dish or New York Beauty quilt for awhile now. Maybe just a mini quilt later this year.

The Circle of Geese is my latest attempt. It was not without problems, like forgetting to check that the piece I am about to sew is sitting in the right place and not folded over so that I sew it all wrong. That happened twice. Also not checking to make sure I haven't picked up the next couple of pieces along with the piece I am sewing, because they were sitting too close to the machine and as I sewed, they came along for the ride.

That would be the two white strips hanging from the bottom of the block, after being sewn in to the seam of the white piece pinned diagonally across the block. This may have happened more than once. 

Yes, I'm a slow learner.

Anywho, despite a couple of setbacks and seams unpicked, I'm very happy with the result.

I used some scraps of Amy Butler Soul Blossoms, the fabric I'm using for the Starflower quilt. Amazingly, some of the geese even worked with fussy cutting. Now that's a minor miracle!

WIP Wednesday

First off, a finish. This quilt has been sitting in on my WIP posts since I first joined in the WIP Wednesday linky party.

Sorry it's not a great pic, bad lighting and I had to improvise and find something tall enough to hang it on, it's still dragging on the ground.  This quilt started life as the Floral Bouquet quilt from one of the Jelly Roll books.  I renamed it Lily Quilt as I think the flowers look like waterlilies. At least to me they do. I used left over jelly roll strips to make a scrappy binding. All the details and stats in my next post.



After my trip to Melbourne last week and visiting Amitie, I was inspired to try another Circle Game block.

This is the second one. I'm enjoying the hand sewing part, the cutting out templates, tracing and cutting pieces.....not so much!


When I was cleaning out a cupboard I found this box that I had kept "just in case" and it is the perfect size to store the Circle Game blocks.


I also made the second block in Foundation Paper Piecing For The Terrified (FPPFTT).
I'm really enjoying these and now I'm not quite so terrified of FPP, hmm I may yet have to eat my words when the blocks become more complicated. I'll have  a few orphan blocks when I've finished that I might be able to use for projects down the track.


For the second block I used scraps from this quilt, that I made back in 2010.


As usual I had a million things in my head thatI've been wanting to make, but rather than start on one of those, I had to start something else. Do you ever have those moments?  Today the tutorial from Elizabeth at Oh Frannson was calling my name. I pulled out two charm packs, a Kona solids and "A Stitch In Color" .




I only made this block 8 x 8 squares as I want to try making a mini quilt with this as the centre. It's not wonky, it's just my bad photography skills.


Oh and for those that remember I was working on a mini quilt for a swap but I couldn't reveal the finished piece, I believe my partner has received it.
So here it is.


Worked On This Week
Paper Piecing For The Terrified
Lily Quilt
Amitie - Circle Game BOM
Charm pack squares

Sitting On The Sidelines
Material Obsession BOM
Starflowers

Ignoring
McFlurry
Mystery Quilt - to be fair, I did get it out of the bag and contemplate trying a block after my paper piecing successes, but put it back in the bag after about 30 15 seconds.


Statistics
Finished - 1
Worked On - 4
Waiting Patiently For Me To Show Interest - 2
New - 1

Pop on over to Freshly Pieced and see lots of other WIP's and inspiration this week.

WIP Wednesday

A little bit quiet on the sewing front this week. I flew to Melbourne for a couple of days break and took some hand sewing with me. The plane trip is just over 2 hours so I packed some starflowers to sew, along with my trusty needle threader and a thread cutter.  I was going great guns until my needle threader died.  It started shredding the thread. I tried threading the needle by hand but the thread cutter wasn't cutting the thread very cleanly, which made it impossible to thread the teeny tiny needles. I gave up after about 15 mins.
This is all I managed to do. Attach the three diamonds.



I've joined in Foundation Paper Piecing for the Terrified which is being run by the lovely Katy at The Littlest Thistle. I've paper pieced before but found it too daunting and a pain in the backside as I quite often cut the fabric the wrong size and shape.  Katy's instructions are clear and concise and I made the first block last night. I used some left over Martinique jelly roll strips from my scrap bin.


With only one little problem.

I forgot to trim the seam before folding the fabric into position after sewing, and when I remembered later I didn't fold it back far enough and sliced the fabric right through the middle when I trimmed the seam!  I won't make that mistake again.




I've also started the binding for the Lily Quilt. I should have it finished in the next couple of days.

Worked On This Week
Starflowers
Paper Piecing for the Terrified
Lily Quilt

Sitting On The Sidelines
McFlurry
Material Obsession BOM
Amitie Circle Game BOM - I even went to Amitie while I was in Melbourne to get some tips on working on the blocks.
Mystery Quilt - oops I forgot about this one

Ignoring 
Whoa - nothing, I'll have to rectify that, lol

Statistics
Finished - 0
Worked On - 3
Waiting Patiently For Me - 4
New - 1

Hmm I'm thinking I could start something new. I hardly have any WIP's that I'm counting.

Linking with Lee at Freshly Pieced, pop on over to check out other WIP's this week.