On and off the bed

 

This quilt a long held UFO was finished in 2021. Many of the blocks were swapped with American quilters and the teal and brown fabric to go with it was bought in a long ago JEMS sale. The owners retired long ago. I will pass it along but meanwhile Maggie (Priory Lane Quilting) has done a good job of the quilting and it covers us up nicely.

Shortly destined for the For sale pile

This favoured "Stepping Stones" piece mostly designed by Jackie Taylor of White Cottage took its place this week. Definitely a "keeper".

However we've had a cold snap and now I've added another one on top. I thought I didn't like this started in a Jan Hassard class but now I'm so relieved Isobel and Sophie didn't decide to buy it. I like looking at the big stitch quilting I added.

Checking in

 I have lots of quilting to do, two smaller quilts and I finally pysched myself up to quilt the Criss Cross quilt. Next is just finishing off the BOM sashing. I use my Janome for quilting and binding and put my ironing board next to me as a support. 

Quilting set up

On the Hotchpotch quilt I quilted on either side of the seams instead of in the ditch, wavy crossing lines in the border and used a 55" wide Llama print on the back. 

Llamas

Having ditch quilted the two central block seams on the Criss Cross quilt I am now hand quilting in perle cotton around the stars and inside the corner hour glasses. It hasn't taken too long and I'm now going around the edge blocks. I laid out the quilt to see where I was up to. 

Criss Cross quilt

Scintillating Scraps . .

. . . was the title of Jan's workshop last September and I have borrowed friends' dies to cut hundreds of HST's which combine to make a 3" finished square. The block is a nine patch with a single dark central  square and six dark/light HST's and six dark/medium HSTs. The darks were straightforward but I found lights/mediums tricky to sort. So much white in scraps makes me uneasy!
The idea is to arrange half the blocks one way and alternate locks the other way up. I have now made 38 blocks, my A set. I need 72 in all 36 of each though I've a couple of spares. I shall now embark on my second set made from different fabrics so there shouldn't be two the same touching and the pressing of seams will alternate too.

These blocks are arranged the same way up.

These are alternated so the mediums "weave" through the lights.