Saturday 23 July 2016

Playing catch-up - June's aqua blocks for the RSC 16

Angela at Soscrappy is hosting a rainbow Scrap Challenge again this year. I decided not to tie myself to her sampler blocks, but to use the colours each month in making a bear's paw block. I was occupied with other things in June, but this week I made the units of my bear's paw in aqua, which was the colour for June. (For more about this project click here)

June - Bear's Paw units in aqua
Now I've caught up on this project it's time to look out the other projects lounging in their boxes and give them a shake up! I guess Angela won't be announcing the new colour for another week or so; can I finish "Allietare!" in one week??!

I'm linking to 
RSC16
so hop over there to see all the pink perfection 
other participants are making in July.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Friday 22 July 2016

Star Light, Star Dark QAL

Quilty Habit
Jessica at Quilty Habit is organising a quilt along in which the participants will be making a quilt of traditional blocks but in a modern layout. I liked the idea of this challenge as soon as I read about it, but it's taken me quite a while to pull enough fabrics together to meet the criteria: three colours, of which we need at least six or seven light fabrics and six or seven dark ones, while achieving enough contrast within the six colour-groups.

Here is my choice of fabric:


The three piles in the foreground are my ultimate choice and the two piles behind are the fabrics I rejected as being too yellow for the green group, and too red/pink for the purple group. The top of the purple pile is a difficult shade: here it looks blue, but with blue fabrics it definitely looks purple! As I'm not using blue I decided to leave it in for now and see how it goes. Not all the pieces here are full FQs I'm hoping that some of the smaller pieces will be large enough for the smaller stars.

I'm linking up to
Quilty Habit

so hop over there to see other participants' fabric choices.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Saturday 16 July 2016

July's RSC blocks: pink.

A short post this time as I finally got back to the sewing machine yesterday after a break of more than five weeks. My hip has continued to heal steadily, thanks to everyone's good wishes, and I can now walk without supports for short distances (like 50 metres!), but that's a start. However, I still have a rolling gait, as if I've just spent the last five weeks at sea!

Once at the sewing machine yesterday I sewed these bear paws:

Oops! Bottom left looks larger than the rest .. I didn't get round to trimming before the photo!

and then put everything so far up on the design wall.

Bear's paw blocks will finish at 13.5" square.

The block top left is the only one finished, and I'm thinking of unpicking the sashing and redoing it at 1.5" finished width, the same size as the squares. I shan't be joining any of the other units until I have all the colours finished and can make combinations I really like.

I'm linking up to
so nip over there to see masses of pink perfection!

Happy sewing

Marly.

Sunday 3 July 2016

Quilty 365 circles in June

Towards the end of last year Audrey at Quilty Folk offered a challenge to appliqué a circle on a square each day. My response to that was positive: that wouldn't take long each day, and I could teach myself (with a lot of YouTube assistance) to do needle-turn appliqué. I started on 1 January and for five months kept on schedule.

Then June was an eventful month in several ways, and this is literally all the sewing I did!



I crocheted a string bag (handwork, but not sewing) but no other sewing:

no 1939's Farmer's Wife blocks,


no improv, 

no Rainbow Scrap Challenge. 


Now you know all the projects I would have been working on, if ....
In my previous post I explained why. I'm now itching to get back to the sewing machine, but the "only sitting with my feet up" rule still applies. I can now stand for long enough to cut fabric so there's no valid reason for not making a lot of circles this month. I'm getting there!

That's enough time writing about almost nothing, so here's going back to exercise and then the needle and thread!

I'm linking up to 
Grab button for http://quiltyfolk.blogspot.com/

so pop in there to see more - a lot more - appliqué circles

Happy sewing

Marly.