Three Cheers!

 Three cheers for Jack Petchy, for his foundation and their awards and for my DD1 who was lucky enough to be nominated for one by her wonderful Guide Leaders! She was awarded hers for her determination in overcoming some of her fears, squaring her shoulders and doing her best (I paraphrase slightly).  I am immoderately proud of her, and loved the award ceremony that we went to last night.    I think that this positive recognition is a wonderful thing for her and all the other young women who received awards last night.  We even had a short talk by adventurer Sally Kettle - what a treat!  Well done, all of you! 

 My sewing for the week pales into nothing compared to that, of course!

Its been a bit of a mish mash, to be honest!

This small 'dark' block (which I love!)

 'Light' corners for the central medallion, plus sewing it together.

 Playing with a new cross stitch design programme (which is really a re-branding  / updating of one that I used to use, I discovered).

It may turn out to be a more expensive purchase than I thought though, as I suspect that I'm going to have to buy some varifocal glasses so that I can stitch and still watch TV!

Two of the light corners in more detail (although before being ironed!).

Hoping to work on 365  now that their website is back up again - I've got quite a lot of catching up to do again!

The joy of sewing

 I had a cold that turned nasty.  I've had even less energy than usual, and that's saying something (plus I've also consumed half my body weight in ice cream and popsicles over the last week trying to tame a sore throat when pain killers weren't doing it quickly enough or well enough - not great news for any hopes of weight loss!).  However, I'm pleased to say that I've finally managed a few minutes sewing.

Needless to say, my first thoughts were with the 365 challenge.

Inner borders for the central medallion!  Mostly quick and straightforward, although the one on the left had me unpicking as much as I was sewing, for some reason!

Looking forward to working on the corners for this set now!

Hope that you are staying healthy and managing lots of creative good works as the seasons change!

A change of Pace

 

I spent some of the week waiting for some fabric to arrive - turned out that I was short of paler background batik fabrics - and I thought that I'd add a few more brights and darks too.... 

Of course, as luck would have it, by the time the fabric arrived I'd caught my DD2's lurgy and haven't been up to sewing since.  No little blocks from the 365 challenge for me this week!

The only sewing I've managed is to finish a few orphan blocks and make a small quilt top.  The centre rounds of these four log cabins were a creditable attempt to use up some fabric from another quilt, apart from the one that had a seam the wrong way (on one of the pieced strips that I'd used) and the one that had a chunk out of the edge, for some reason!  You know, just the sort of things that might put you off actually reaching a finish!

I'm pleased to say that a few moment of unpicking / resewing / trimming and I was all set up to add a couple more rounds with various fabrics that I was happy to give up.  It's more a thing of character than a thing of beauty, but it is made with love!

Sashing and border took the size to 36" square.

Over the next few weeks I'll try to baste it, quilt it and bind it - it's been too long since I've actually finished even a small quilt! 

More blocks

 More of the little 3 1/2" blocks made this week.  I'm enjoying most of them!

 Of course, it's only after you've made them that you spot problems - this snail trail in week 13 isn't quite right, is it?  Oh well! I can decide whether to live with the honesty of the mistake or to remake it at some point!

There were two of the larger blocks - 6 1/2" square this week too.

We are a quarter of the way through the blocks already - it hardly seems possible!

Time for a rest from these for a few days as I've 'had' to order some lighter fabrics for the next blocks that we are going to work on - my stash didn't include many light batiks, when I looked at it!