This week's roundup contains, I think, my favourite block yet - birds in the air (top middle). Construction was a bit of a pain, but I think the final block is pretty striking.
I had a fun week, fitting a bit of block construction in when I could. I didn't realise I'd managed five blocks (actually six, but it was too dark to photograph the last one and add it to this post, so it can go in next week's round up) until I started to write this post.
I noticed that a couple of the participants in the quilt along group have started discussing final layouts, which I'm keeping a close eye on -I just can't quite decide how I feel about a traditional sashing/cornerstone design. Hopefully the solution to that will present itself once I have enough blocks to play around with.
Anyway, block notes...
Block 7 - Birds in the Air
- The charcoal is a sort of aztec tiling style fabric, my bit has no selvege, so it remains nameless. The birds are from Cloud9's My Happy Nursery range
- I love this block. OK, so most of the triangles are wonky, and I may as well have used white for all you can make out of the birds against that grey, but I love the light and dark, and the geometric block style. I can see me revisiting this one
- I don't know why I didn't do HSTs for those bits of the block I was able to - I think it would have kept my triangles straighter.
Block 8 - Bouquet
- The pale blue star print is from the Bear Hugs (boys) range from Marcus Fabrics, the mid blue is Daisy from Lecien's Grandmother' Flower Garden line and the charcoal bicycles you've seen before is Bicycles by Michael Miller.
- I'm also pretty pleased with this block. Mostly because I thought it was going to be harder than it was, but also because I like the grading from dark to light.
Block 9 - Box
- The yellow is little elephants from Japanese fabric maker Daiwabo. I love it.
- I did the maths for this block instead of using templates. Incidentally, I'm a fan of erring on the large size for HSTs and trimming them - it makes even fairly big and simple blocks like this much more accurate. I cut 3.5" squares to make 2.5" square HSTs, to finish at 2".
- I didn't think through my elephant cutting, so they're not all upright - or, indeed, facing the same way. This irritates me. Did you notice it?
Block 10 - Bowtie
- The middle square is the same Lecien print as in block 8, above, and the dandelion clocks is another Liberty Art fabric from last year's V&A Quilts exhibition.
- Don't laugh, but I'd never really clocked quite how bowtie-like this block was until I turned it on point
- I'm pleased I decided to use similar fabrics - I even considered making the whole bowtie out of one fabric.
Block 11 - Broken dishes
- Umm, npoe, haven't a clue what the fabrics are. Comment if you want me to check.
- It was only after I finished this that I realised it is basically the slightly-more-complicated twin of the block I made last week
- I did the sensible thing for this block and made 16 HST blocks rather than cutting 32 fiddly little triangle blocks
Someone in the Flickr group mentioned that it could be nice to see all the blocks completed so far, so I made a mosaic of all my blocks to date, and I'll do this every time I finish enough new blocks to make it worth it. I have to say I'm a little anxious about how not cohesive my blocks look, despite the fairly limited palette. I figure that once I'm up to 30-40 blocks it will all either come together or I'll be able to figure out what to ditch.
