Wednesday 18 February 2015

Scrap happy Spring fling

It actually felt like Spring today, after endless grey, cold days.  It was good to see the sunshine and hear the birds singing again.



A friend gave me these daffodils a week ago when they were just two inches high and there was no sign of any flower buds.  They have rocketed up these past few days and burst into flower yesterday: perfect timing as my friend came round with her lovely daughter to pick out fabrics for a wedding quilt.  More of that in future posts - the wedding's not till August so I am not panicking just yet...

So what have I achieved since I last posted?  Not a massive amount as I am trying to finish quilting a baby quilt for a magazine, and it's somewhat overdue.  But to limber up for quilting I did a bit of my favourite string piecing.








Some of the scraps go back nearly twenty years, and I love how unpromising rags turn into the riches of string blocks, all neatly trimmed and stacked ready for assembling into a quilt top.
















I won't be progressing to joining up the blocks for a while: this is a true work in progress.  I like to make the blocks when I feel the need for some mindless piecing, then I pack them away till I have had enough piecing sessions and am ready to complete the quilt.  When that time comes I will show you the last few stages.
This will be my third 'free' string quilt of this type : here is a photo of the second.

Despite all my efforts over the weekend, the bag of scraps seems just as full.  In fact, the scraps have expanded now that air has got in and I need two bags for the leftovers - sounds like there should be a parable in there but I'm not quite sure how to frame it!




Small 'Christmas in February' finish in amongst all the WIP's.


I made a couple of fabric baskets (mentioned in my last post) to the correct size, using 2" squares of leftover Christmas fabric.  These are a much cuter size (refer to Ayumi's tutorial for more details), and were so quick to make.  I could easily become addicted to making them to co-ordinate with every big quilt project!



 Linking to Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday.  Back to the machine quilting...

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