FW53: Lucy & FW54: Magnolia

A complicated week. One easy block and one hard one. Well, just a lot of small bits. I'm not that overwhelmed with my fabric choices this week but at least they are bright and sunny.


Block 53 Lucy
After taking such a long time, I feel it's a bit monochrome and boring. How annoying! I wish I could foresee these things. It's pretty accurate all things considered.


I think in hindsight I would have made the small four squares totally different colours.


Here are all my sections laid out ready to sew. It took me a few days just to make each unit. It was a good one to break down into small repeating units.


And here are my seams. It was all very neat considering. I thought it would be really bulky but it'd not too bad. I find it really helps to just mega iron at every stage. Plenty of steam, spray starch and really practice pressing correctly so that the seam lines don't warp but do lie flat. I can spend a long time ironing. It really adds time to the overall construction but I think it really makes your block look neat like other peoples. Sometimes open seams aren't good for nesting so it's a bit of working out the best solution for the final fitting together of the units. It really helps with everything lining up though.



Block 54 Magnolia
I considered dropping this block as it's not really my thing but, well, I just did it in the end, hoping my mind might be changed. It's ok, but it's still not really my style. At least I know my own mind.

FW51: Lily & FW52: Lola

Gosh what a lot of hard work this week was. So much so that I put it off for a while. I have now lost my little headstart I had built up for myself since half term and now I realise that Easter is coming up and I will again be out of action for two weeks.


Block 51 Lily
Lily marks a beginning and end. It's the end of the green sprig fabric and the beginning of the Paperie low volume fabric. I love it, it's perfect. I might have to go and buy a bigger stash of it for future use. I did consider replacing the green, but I really need to use up the rest of the fabric I have hoiked out, plus it has already featured on a fair number of blocks.


Once I started on it I realised that once the units were made, it actually all nested together pretty easily but there were just so many bits! I spread it out over the week, just doing small bits at one time so I didn't become overwhelmed. It looks great though in the end. The only bit I ballsed up was adding the big triangle. I didn't use the paper as my bit of fabric needed to be stretched a bit to fit. Of course stretching it just made all of it warp. I should really unpick it but I think once it's quilted you won't notice the wonk.


Here is the very last join where it wonked. Not the biggest glitch in the world but the rest is perfect, so it's a bit annoying. But I look at this block and think how far I have come. I would have been a bit awed by this block at the beginning. This is a good learning curve project.


Block 52 Lola
A nice easy block. I actually did it first. I like that it is light and airy, but I am not sure I am wedded to so much of the dotty fabric. This might be one of the blocks that gets the chop on the border!


My seams are pretty neat though which makes me quite happy.


I am pleased how my injection of yellow is coming along. I might tone it down a bit now as it's only meant to be a highlight colour. I might lay out all my blocks so far and have a think about how it is all coming together as a whole.

FW49: Katherine & 50: Lady

Another week and suddenly it really is halfway. Unreal. This is such a labour of love project. Overall though, this halfway week was an easy one. The Tigerlily cat fabric featured heavily this week. On another note, my new fabric arrived for my new side project and in it was one fat quarter of low volume for this quilt, so that will probably feature in next week's blocks.

FW49: Katherine
This block was nice and easy to sew together but slow to fussy cut as I had to label the direction of each bit and keep checking them against the pattern. Of course once I had finished I realised I had forgotten to cut them as mirror images of the pattern so in the end I just traced the pattern onto the other side of my paper by holding it up to the light.

I really like this block. I've been really looking forward to it. I am not sure why, I just like it. So I wanted to use my favourite fabrics. I felt that I got my colours just right: peaches, pink and purple. 

FW50: Lady
Lady turned out to be pretty easy which was nice. Plus it was a good example to show more cats. I am not sure how much I like my orange spot fabric; it's every so slightly murky, but it's an ok block which came together pretty quickly.


Not much had to match up apart from the central square points so it didn't tax my brain too much

FW47: Joy & FW48: Judy

Another week gone and nearly half way. It feels a bit unreal. It also feels like a long way to go. I toy with the idea of pausing to insert a little side project just to give myself a breather from tiny piecing, but i don't want to upset the flow. This week i did both blocks as they were so nice. I was going to drop Joy as I promised myself I would just do one per week but in the end I caved in. 

Block 47 Joy

This was a nice block to do. There are a few bits that don't line up, but in general, i'm happy. I couldn't really decide on the colour so I just went with yellow again. I have sort of lost the plot with my colour scheme. I thought I had a plan but I don't seem to. So I thought I would just be a bit random and get some more blocks under my bely before having a sit down with them all. I guess it times like this when you wish you had a big design wall to put them up on.

Block 48 Judy

This block came together quite quickly but my middle unit didn't line up with the others by quite a long shot. Luckily I had stretch on my side and was able to do some hardcore stretching. 

I wasn't sure about the colours. I wanted the star to be yellow but I cut the wrong bits out so it ended up where it is. Bizarrely if I had got it right then it would have looked exactly like Kerry's which I didn't see until after I had made this. Great minds...


I'm pretty pleased with the result. It looks very bright and pleasing. So I am glad I made the block in the end. I'm starting to feel like I need to have a crack at something completely different so I don't race ahead. Maybe that's me getting a bit ahead of myself though, we'll see.