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 

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

Happy sewing

Marly.

RSC 16 April is Orange!

For those living in The Netherlands April is the Orange month! The King's birthday is 27 April and there will be a lot of orange on view. International football (soccer) matches also bring out an orange rash, but I don't know if any are planned this month.

For me April is orange because Angela chose it as the challenge colour for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

I've been working on 1930's Farmer's Wife blocks this week:

bottom left is the frustrating paper pieced block, which with your help was finished in a few hours, as opposed to two days for the first quarter!

No orange here but I did make a few orange and black HST's as leaders and enders. They might just find their way into joining up with the orange squares sometime this month.

Last Sunday I wrote about some secret sewing for Merel, the owner of Birdblocks quilt shop in Amsterdam.She has been seriously ill, but her health is now improving and she is communicating with the outside world via Instagram.

Definitely orange: Merel likes bright colours.

       

This is my contribution (also orange!) to the bunting being made to decorate her room in the convalescent home. You can read more about her (in English!) on her Instagram account, @merel_birdblocks, and on my blog here.

I'm linking to 

 Click on the button to see more orange zest!

Happy sewing

Marly.

RSC 16 Still March: more purple!

Each month Angela at Soscrappy posts a colour and many quilters use their scraps of that colour throughout the month. This year March's colour is purple. Angela also posts patterns for a sampler, but, after two years of Rainbow Samplers, I'm taking a year off the sampler, and making my own rainbow quilt of bear paw blocks.

I made two more purple blocks this last week,
 

to add to the ones I made the week before.

Furthermore, I've been struggling with paper piecing one of the blocks in the 1930's Farmer's Wife, which I'm making along with a group of other (much better!) quilters at my LQS, QuiltersPalet in The Hague. I've wasted so much fabric trying to keep the outside edges of the block straight on the fabric grain. I wonder if it's really necessary when I'm stitching to paper anyway. What do you think? Keep the edges on the straight of grain at all costs, or not?

I've also managed to appliqué a circle each day for the Quilty 365 project. It's becoming difficult to find fabrics I haven't used already. I'll be posting more about this project next Friday.

This weekend I'll be linking up to

  and to 

For more scrappy fun click the buttons above on Saturday and Sunday respectively.

Happy sewing

Marly.

January progress

 The first couple of weeks of January I spent catching up with Allietare! (click for information on the button to the left).  I chose to make a slightly smaller version than the official one  but after the reveal on 1 January discovered I hadn't made enough; now I'm making the setting triangles. I posted here about not having a suitable grey, but fortunately managed to pick it up the following day. I thought I had a photo on my phone, but I haven't got even one photo of the completed blocks. I'll remedy that soon when I'm ready to start joining the rows.

On 1 January I started with the Quilty 365 project which I had read about in November in  blog post from Deb. This project is being organised by Audrey at Quilty Folk and you can read about it here.
I decided then to wait and start symbolically in the New Year and to appliqué each circle using the needle-turn technique. This is a technique I'd never tried before, but after some You Tube tuition I felt confident enough to start! The first block took me 3 hours! Number 31 took 55 minutes! We're moving in the right direction! I really like the result so far.

January's blocks in chronological order, which will probably not be the final order.

At the start I thought I'd make the circles larger on "special" days; the first two (1 and 2 January) are larger circles: one for New Year, and one for my youngest Grandson's birthday.
At first I just picked matching pieces of roughly the right size from the scrap bin, but after about 10 days decided:

• to cut some solid squares in different colours to make the daily choosing-ritual easier (and faster!),
• to glue the circles with a smear of Sew Line glue in the centre,
• to alternate light and dark backgrounds in the final layout (medium backgrounds will count as light or dark, depending on their neighbours),
• and to experiment with colour.

My favourite block is number 15 (middle of the left-hand column): two purple fabrics joined in a curve on the machine, WITHOUT pins!!! You can probably imagine my surprise when it laid flat immediately! I learnt to do this from Leanne's video on sewing Drunkard's path blocks. It's brilliant!

As if this wasn't enough of a new project in January, I've also joined the Ad Hoc Improv Quilters (button on the right). This group has been going for about six months, so I'm a late starter, but have read up on improvised quilting on the sites of Kaya and Ann. Although I haven't started an improv project, I think the following three blocks could count as improv piecing.

As I'm not sure where the whole Quilty 365 project is going, maybe the whole project can be called "improv" too.

In total contrast to improvised patchwork I joined a club at my local quilt shop to make the blocks of the "Farmer's Wife 1930's sampler quilt". This is old style precision cutting and sewing, although I'm experimenting with colour here again.

top row: November, 2nd row: December (still 3 blocks to do), 3rd row: January (but it's not over yet!)

We are adding setting triangles and quilting as we  go, in theory. Everyone else is, so I shall have to cut the backing, wadding and setting triangles soon! I have until Tuesday week to fill these rows!

I'm linking up to:

    

Happy sewing

Marly.