Another small piece in progress

I'm flip flopping between projects at the moment.

I'm making another cushion cover, this time with some paper piecing.

It's a pattern by Jo Avery called the Avery Garland.

You can see her lovely work here.

Of course, in her quilt she repeats the make 9 times, but I'm only creating it once to make my cushion cover.

I've chosen to make mine in some of my favourite batiks

The paper piecing complete, it's time to add the applique.

Here are the parts ready to add

And here is the first stem.  A bit more work to do before it's ready to be quilted, but now I feel that I'm well on the road with it.  Time to check whether I have a spare cushion pad that is the right size!
 

I should have started with a plan.....

I wanted to make a quilt with a simple pattern and decided to use up some of my pink and blue/white stash, where I knew that I only had limited amounts of them.  Of course, the 'limited' bit already tells it's own story.

I planned to make 6" finished squares, knew that I could get two from a width of fabric x 2.5", so I cut 4 strips from six fabrics and mixed them up a bit.

For some reason I thought that this would give me almost 100 squares, rather than approximately half that number.  Oops!

Never mind, I thought.  I'll just make the same again.  No, not possible, as I had only limited amount of these fabrics......

I decided that I could add in one more fabric, and make some solid rather than 'square in a square' blocks, and reduce the size to nine blocks square instead of ten blocks square.

A little time with my cross stitch program (it's a really easy way to see where to put blocks, if you are working the wrong way round, like I was, and making a design to use a specific number of blocks, not making the number of blocks for a design, which is more usual!).

Then I laid them out on the floor, paired them up ready to sew, and started chain peicing them.

It won't be long until I have a quilt top ready to iron, back / baste and quilt!

In the mean time I shall cut a binding from whatever I have enough of, and put everything else into my scrap drawers.  It's soon going to be time to address those drawers again, as they are getting to be hard to close.

Hope that you have a fun project to enjoy this week too!
 

Double Disappearing 9-Patch

I wanted to try a mini version of a block to see if I liked it enough to make a whole quilt from it.

I started with a nine patch made from 2" squares.

I sewed them together.

I didn't iron the block, which I might do at this stage another time.

Then I made six cuts.  Two across the centre,  splitting that centre square into four quarters.

Then four cuts, cutting diagonally across each mini square that was made.

Then the parts are rearranged to make two smaller blocks, with two of the centre quarters 'kissing' in the middle.

I do realise that the photos would have been better if the block had been ironed!

Then the two mini blocks were sewn together, and I joined the two together so that I could see the lattice effect.

My nine 2" squares gave me two blocks that are 2 7/8" square.

I'm told that if you start off with nine 5" squares then you get two blocks that are 8 1/2" square, which seems to be a good useful size for making a quilt.
 

Quilt finish!

A month ago I made a quilt top.  This week I finally completed it as a quilt!

The Starburst pattern by Missouri Star Quilt Company was quick and fun to make.  I made it in just two colours, but it would be easy to make a scrappy version (or a curated version!) too.

Pictures taken in afternoon sunshine, after a day which started with snow flurries.  Difficult to predict what weather you will get in April!

I quilted the interior 36 blocks with a loose meander, and the outer ring of blocks with a simple feather.  It's so long since I'd tried any sort of feather that I thought that I could do with the practice!

Not shown here, but it was a pieced back - just three fabric strips - the one shown here and a polka dot with a similar blue.

Finishing at about 50" square it's a good lap quilt size, and will probably go to Project Linus.

Now to decide on my next project!