January is blue for RS16 and so I cut up all the little pieces needed for the first seven blocks from the 365 challenge and laid them out in their blocks
Here they are all complete
I actually completed week two last week so it is a bit back to front. I should be back on track with everyone else now!
Well it’s been a hard week at work so this is just a short post and now it’s time for bed zzzzzzz
It’s the beginning of a new year and time for a new challenge. I just have to stay stitch the RSC15 Challenge quilt before I send it off to the long armer, so that means it is time for the RSC16 sampler quilt This year the quilt is a column along, only I couldn’t make the first block because I couldn’t work out how to do it without the rulers used! So I decided to make something else, whilst still keeping an eye on Angela’s blocks – as she knows so many! Seriously, her blog So Scrappy is a marvellous resource for blocks and sampler quilts
After many ideas mused upon and shelved for another day I suddenly found inspiration on Facebook. So I am being crafty (obviously!) as I am combining the RSC16 with the 365 Challenge – the Ultimate Sampler. You can find more details here
There is a weekly giveaway on the Facebook page too. I tried to complete week two in time but had tension issues with my machine so I missed the deadline, nevermind I still have seven blocks completed
They are such dinky little blocks, only 3″ but I love them! Better get on with week one.
I am so pleased that the top is complete – I did think about adding a border of flying geese but after putting it on the bed in the spare room I can see it is big enough as it is.
I have the batting ready and fabric to piece for the back then it is off to the longarmer to get it quilted. I haven’t decided on the pattern but not too fancy as this quilt is all about the colour
I had a lovely trip to the quaint village of Wickham Market, Suffolk so I could visit Quilter’s Haven. What a beautiful shop and now I know where it is, the lady who owns it is retiring! The shop is up for sale so I hope it is purchased and continues for many years. I bought backing and thread for my tumbler quilt, a couple of half metres that caught my eye and some Downton Abbey fat quarters that were on sale. All this while my other half was in Café 46
We had a lovely lunch in this vintage style, very relaxed café and the price was reasonable to – definitely recommended. Unfortunately the weather was not too good so we didn’t get to explore the village itself but what we saw was charming. Sorry for the lack of photos, but I didn’t take my camera as shopping was foremost in my mind!
Now the main part of the RSC15 is finished it is time to start on the RSC16!
After all the terrible events that have been happening around the world in Paris, Beirut and Syria to name a few, I didn’t feel like posting anything about patchwork squares or crotchet as it seemed so trivial. So many lives lost and so many lives altered forever. But then I thought back to a few decades ago when the IRA had ceased bombing mainland Britain for a while so I booked and paid for a theatre trip for a large group of family and friends in London. Then the bombing started again. I thought nobody would want to go and phoned everyone. Not a single person refused to go.
The comments were along the lines of; ‘Hitler never stopped us by bombing ‘ (from someone who survived the Blitz), ‘When your times up, your times up wherever you are’, ‘Nobody is telling me what to do’ ‘Don’t let them win’ and so on. Nearly everyone had worked in London during other bombing campaigns so this was no different.
The moral really is ‘Keep calm and carry on’ (WWII poster). The objective of terrorism is to stop you living a normal life. The French Tricolour is flying at half-mast on our town hall to show solidarity with Paris and in honour of Nick Alexander a resident of Colchester who died in the Bataclan attack. Remember the dead and those affected by these terrible events.
But do not tar everyone with the same brush. Nobody attacked me as a catholic when the IRA killed innocent civilians and nobody should attack Muslims for this atrocity. That is what Daesh want, don’t play into their hands.
To carry on as normal then; swamp angel star completed
A few more alternative blocks and the top will be complete.
The applique fans are also nearly ready – just the inner circles to add once I have decided on the layout. For now I have been playing around with the composition, but might stick to the one in the ‘Quilting From Little Things’
The tumbler quilt top is nearly complete but still waiting for one more block for The Global Quilting Project. Four projects are nearing completion and my thoughts are already turning to the RSC16. What are you working on?
We are on to the last colour for the RSC15 sampler quilt and the colour is lime green. I am late posting as I fell asleep when I got in from work, but here it is
I used to look at the central fabric and wonder what possessed me to buy it but it fits here perfectly
This is what happens when you haven’t found a new place for your design wall so you use the bed instead. Every single block and the imprint of a cats paw on it but this was the chosen block for a nice snooze
Today is Remembrance Sunday when we remember the dead and all those who served in the Great War and those that came after – is a topic that deserves it’s own post for later.
Four more blocks completed and on the line – not far behind the rest of the group considering I started in August and not January. It was quite breezy but I managed to get a few shots in between gusts
I returned to the Whirling Geese block and used darker blues, as my mid-blue version was a bit too light. I used the inner block from the orange month to do a second mid-blue block too which is a Twirling Four Patch. It’s more like a pinwheel than the block that is called a pinwheel!
I finished the yellows too. Monkey Wrench is in the original list, however, the second paler block should have been Air Castle but I substituted this block whose name escapes me.
As you can see it is another lovely sunny day which is a welcome return after the last few days which have been cold and grey
Next job on the list was chain piecing the squares I had prepared earlier in the week for the alternate blocks
All the indigo, pink, red, yellow and orange are now in little four or two patches. The good thing about all this piecing is the amount of tumblers that were sewn together too. All are at the very least paired up and about half of those are now in fours. It’s surprising how quickly this Leaders and Enders project is going. It may even be finished at the same time as the Rainbow Scrap Challenge! Now all I need to do is keep up with the Quilting From Little Things and they will all be wrapped up by the end of the year – nearly forgot the Global Quilting Project! Just waiting for one more block and then assembly can begin. Perhaps I will have three full-sized quilts for New Year
A very busy day on Friday. Finished four more blocks for the RSC15 and cut squares for the alternate blocks in yellow, orange and red. Posted my two tulip blocks for the Block Lotto and tidied the sewing room. Got a phone call to say that I am through to the second round of interviews for a job at Little Havens charity shop – fingers crossed!
My sewing room is too small so I am spreading out into the hall. It should be a bit more thread free as I made another fabric pot on Friday too, for all those little threads and clippings – my other one lives in the hall on an Ikea bookcase which has become my cutting table. It’s a bit low but I think adding castors (the locking kind) will raise it up high enough to save my back.
It might be October but the weather has been wonderful; warm and sunny with a slight mist this morning just to remind you that it is Autumn.
Do you remember a certain singer who decided that a symbol would represent him instead of a name? Well that’s how I remembered him after twisting the title of one of his songs. Now that’s what I think of this block. I just kept getting it wrong and the final product is wrong, but I like it the way it is. Nothing to do with the instructions, they were fine, but I have a bad habit of making things late at night when I should go to bed. I am tired and I make mistakes, fortunately it’s not brain surgery!
It was supposed to be Carrie Nation but I completely forgot to add a third purple to the small squares which are supposed to run through the middle, so I played around with the arrangement and made this instead. Not so much Carrie Nation as Frustration!
I was multi-tasking and making more than one block so I could chain piece but things went awry, never mind the end result is going in the final quilt anyway!
Another purple block still to be made yet. Watch this space
What a boring title LOL I hope the blocks aren’t boring though! As usual I used as many different fabrics as I could. Traditionally a churn dash block is made in two fabrics, I used seven but this is a scrap challenge quilt so I only had small amounts of a couple of them. Now they are even smaller!
I love the little mini sawtooth star inside the bigger one. The greens for this block are completely different to the previous one; it’s not until you put them together that you can see how much variety there is in one colour.
Now I have a third green block to make. The flying geese are ready and waiting for the inner block but I haven’t decided which one to do. Angela has a lot of choice over at So Scrappy which you can visit HERE
This month the blocks are all orange and I really like the ‘whirling blades’ block but I have already made my orange blocks https://thecraftyyak.wordpress.com/2015/09/12/a-couple-of-oranges/ and https://thecraftyyak.wordpress.com/2015/09/11/a-bird-in-the-hand-and-why-i-chose-this-block/
Maybe I have found my third green block!
Catching up with the sawtooth stars, although the alternating blocks are still to be tackled!
We associate pink with girls ( in the West) but it was not always so as this article by Polly Curtis writing for the Guardian, points out;
“Interestingly Goldacre quotes in the same piece newspaper articles from the earlier part of the 20th century in which mothers were encouraged to dress their boys in pink and girls in blue, proof he says that clothing tastes change over time. He writes:
Back in the days when ladies had a home journal (in 1918) the Ladies’ Home Journal wrote: “There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger colour is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”
The Sunday Sentinel in 1914 told American mothers: “If you like the colour note on the little one’s garments, use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a follower of convention.”
You can find the full article HERE and there are some other interesting points about stereotyping for toy preference.
My mother wasn’t one for sticking to the stereotypes; I almost exclusively wore blue, one of my sisters had a train set and none of us were particularly interested in dolls. My main interest was making them clothes rather than ‘make-believe’ that they were alive.
I think things are actually worse today – Lego is a prime example – once advertised in the 70 and 80s as a toy for children, now it is segregated into ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ sets.
Compare their philosophy and old adverts to the ‘modern’ ones Here A huge step backwards and making 5 year old girls worry about their appearance rather than just playing with toys is a disgrace
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