Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Little bits

Hello friends! We are having a dark, wet, and gloomy time around here, so I hope it's warm and sunny where you are. It is October and this is what we expect about now, but that doesn't make it any easier. On a related note, does anyone besides me miss the smell of burning leaves? I know it's air pollution, but that smell really means autumn to me.

Well, since I finished Burgoyne Surrounded last week (which is now at the quilter--yay me!) I thought I would stick to some small projects this week. I know I still have the Ocean Waves quilt to finish (and not far to go on it, either), but I am just not up for working on a big quilt right now. I just don't have the mental energy. Plus I want some immediate gratification!

While I was mucking out the sewing room this weekend--which was a disaster, let me tell you--I found these snowflake blocks:


Someone gave me these a while ago. (I mean years ago. True story.)  They are well-made, but as you can probably see, they were sewn with white thread. Take a look at the close-up:


Yep, you can see the white thread showing through the seams.  It's pretty distracting. These are constructed on a 9-patch grid, and I think I can just rip the main seams and restitch them with a dark gray thread and call it good. I don't want to put a lot into this, but I still think I can make them look a little better and use them in a winter table topper or something. I forgot to measure them, but I think they're 9 inches finished.

I also started on one of the paper pieced projects I showed before:


This is the Halloween one. Did you know that some patterns that are printed in the magazines are also available in easily printable form on their websites? I never really paid attention to those little notices in the magazine, but lo and behold--there they were! No tracing! Just download and print. It was great. And you can see that I couldn't stand to use gray so I used this star/sky print instead. I like it. This uses big pieces, so I hope to finish it this week.

I also decided that I'm going to give Vicki Welsh's "Cross the Drunkard's Path" quilt along a go. It goes until the end of the year, so I have a shot at finishing something by then. I have these to use:



I've had these templates forever, so now I'm finally going to put them to use. They make 4-inch finished blocks. And I always seem to get carried away with these things, so I'm limiting myself only to the fabric I have here. There is almost a yard of the floral fabric, all leftover from a backing for a previous quilt, so it's in pieces. There's also about a yard of the green, which is not a Kona but an Art Gallery fabric which has a great hand. I think I can make a fairly small quilt and enjoy the process during a high-pressure time for me here near the end of the year.

That's enough for now, don't you think? Also, I did see that Bonnie Hunter has released the colors for this year's mystery at her blog. It's in brights. Oh, the temptation! I suspect I know what I'll be doing in January!

Linking to Linky Tuesday, Fabric Tuesday, WIP Wednesday, and Let's Bee Social. Hope everyone has some happy projects to work on this week!

4 comments:

Quiltdivajulie said...

I had a teacher once who suggested using a fine point permanent Sharpie marker (or other permanent marker) to ink those offending white stitches . . . it worked on her quilts (she showed us).

Quiltdivajulie said...

p.s. Welcome to the Drunkard's Path QAL (I, too, am trying to NOT over cut and set myself up for too many more projects).

Lane said...

I've had my four inch DP templates for years, too, and rarely use them. But, aren't they great when you need them? Just saw the Burgoyne Surrounded quilt yesterday. Wonderful quilt! Congrats! Lane

Lorna McMahon said...

I agree with Quiltdivajulie and would consider using a marker to hide those seams. They are very nicely pieced blocks though! Hope you enjoy working on the Drunkard Path blocks. It takes a little bit of practice to get started, but is fun once you get the hang of it. Here is a great video tutorial by Leanne of She Can Quilt. http://www.shecanquilt.ca/2011/12/sewing-curves-is-not-hard-seriously.html