Quilt Progression

An update on the progress of the 'Freebird' quilt today. After I managed to complete sewing my charm squares into 9-patch blocks over the weekend, on monday evening I got on with the next step. Many apologies for the dodgy picture quality - there was what can only be described as a monsoon going on outside! As well as this I was watching Andy Murray's first round match at Wimbledon so was slightly distracted while taking the photos!

I cut the 9-patch block at the halfway mark vertically and then did the same horizontally:

Each 9-patch block yields 4 smaller blocks - I had 12 9-patch blocks in total so now have 48 smaller blocks. Tonight I may get on with the fun bit - arranging and organizing the little blocks into a combination I like! This is largely dependent on whether the wallpaper stripping in one of our reception rooms keeps calling me! I must learn to complete one thing before going on to another one of these days!

Productive Weekend and a Happy Monday!

Good Morning! And what a beautiful morning it is! The sun is streaming through the windows and I am going to have a lovely organisational and pottery type of day, hopefully with some sneaky quilting thrown in a bit later! I've had a productive weekend involving much crafting (well as much as two children and a Dr hubby on nights can allow!), a lunch out, lots of cricket (TMS mostly on the radio) and some bread baking!

Since baby boy arrived in February I've had to snatch crafting time here and there, which is as it should be :-), but my blogging has been rather sporadic as a consequence. Over the weekend I was inspired by a post on the rossie blog highlighting 'the process pledge'. In a nutshell this is an appeal to all the bloggers out there to post about the process of their projects - creative and practical, the highs and lows, finished and unfinished objects! In the past I've been very guilty of posting a picture of a finished project but with little information about how it got there. The process pledge is quite liberating for me as I have many, many projects on the go at once that I could be sharing as progress is made rather than waiting for the completed article! So here goes - a new blogging plan of attack!

Do you remember the lovely Deb Strain fabric in the previous post? It was purchased to complete a project started last summer (ooops) based on the 'snippets' quilt I made previously. It had been left so long I couldn't remember what went where due to poor or non existent labelling! There was nothing to be done but start from scratch but this time using a differet pattern.

Firstly I sewed 3 charm squares together - the charms are all from the Moda 'Freebird' range by MoMo - love MoMo fabrics! After reading Elizabeth Hartmann (of Oh Fransson fame)'s book 'The Practical Guide to Patchwork', I decided to change the habit of a quilting lifetime (not long!) and press my seams OPEN! I have to say I found piecing for the next step of the quilt much easier with the seams open - I joined three strips of 3 charms to form a 9 patch square:

(Sorry about the picture quality - it was dusk and my hand was shaking!)

My hope is today to cut the 9 patch blocks up to start making a disappearing 9-patch quilt top over the next couple of days!