Roman Stripes - the beginning

At the moment, these blocks are just strip blocks, but I intend to use half of each of them (there are more than three, but that's what would fit in the photo) with some of the leftover backing fabric from the quilt I attached binding to the other day, to create some Roman stripes. Should be a fun quilt - great for the teenage stash at Linus/Teenage Cancer Trust.

Something completely different

Feeling the need to stitch something - anything - I decided to make use of the leftover bits of backing from the quilt I attached binding to yesterday, and strips of the three fabrics I used as binding for that quilt. I also threw in some difficult fabrics I've had lying around, and started making strip blocks with a view to Roman Stripes, in the fullness of time. Of course, I didn't get much done yet, but there's always tomorrow.

A bit more Christmas sewing

Amidst all the hubub of Christmas (and with having my mother as a houseguest) there's not quite as much time to sew as I might like. But I did take a few minutes to finish putting together the blocks from these small squares of Christmas fabric. What I will do with them, I'm not sure - I'm planning a Christmassy project as a gift for someone; perhaps they will be part of that.

A little bit Christmassy

I don't have a large stash of Christmas fabrics (in fact, that's all of it, above), and most of it is pretty gentle - no really strident reds, for instance. I've made a Christmas quilt in the past and am probably not going to make another fancy one, but I decided it might be nice to do a little scrappy one, either to keep or give away. So I decided to keep it really simple, and just use squares.  I don't know how much of the fabric I'll use, I'll just make blocks until I get bored of them and see where that takes me!

Here's a start - strips, cut into squares, stitched into twos and then fours...

Rail fence variations

Here are the blocks which resulted from the prep the other day - a good selection of them, at 6.5" (to finish at 6) - whether I use them just by themselves, or perhaps alternate with 6.5" square, who knows - probably the latter, as it will make the resulting top less busy and perhaps be a good way to use a larger print.  I should check out what awkward larger prints I might have to use up...  But not today!

Another bit of block prep

So, once again, another preparation for some basic block sewing - this time I'm going to use my 3.5" squares (cut to 2.5x3.5) to make groups of three, with a crossbar at the top, in a kind of rail fence variation. The fabrics in the top photo are the ones I'm going to use as the crossbars. Probably.  There aren't that many 3.5" squares, so I might need some of the 4" ones as well.

Coordinating fours

So I decided to use some more of the bordering fabrics, in larger pieces, to make some coordinating wonky four patches to go with the others - these are themselves 6.5", so they are the same size as the finished other blocks. There are 16 of these, so 36 blocks in total - not sure how I will arrange them when I eventually get around to setting them out and stitching them together, but that's a problem for another day. For the time being, they can go in the block set basket and wait patiently for me to do something with them!

Bordered wonky fours

...and here's the resulting blocks - the centres are various, but mostly in keeping with the colours of the bordering blocks. There are 20 of them - 6 of each of the lighter colours and 8 of the green ones. However, they are quite small (6.5"), so I might need something to go with them!

Last mermaid top

...and here's the third of the little mermaid tops. These aren't my favourite scrappy tops ever, but I'm sure some little girl will enjoy the mermaids. I hope so, at any rate.

Another mermaid top

Here's another scrappy top with a little mermaid panel, which is bordered and ready to go to my Project Linus Coordinator, who I'm going to meet up with in the half-term week. 

Strings, with border

Another centre which has been hanging around waiting to have a border - I chose this purple Civil War Repro, which I've had in stash for quite a while, as purple is very popular with girls, apparently. Plus, it's pretty. I think it works well with the scrappy strings. 

Brown reduction

And yes, all that brown work has reduced the brown stash a bit - it now fits in one rather full CD box, rather than two partly full ones. Progress!  I'm happy to have a stash, but not a stash which has a silly amount of fabric I won't ever use...

And some scraps were generated - strips and small bits. I wonder if it's time to have a look in the strip bag again to see how full it's becoming...

Brown cross blocks with borders, finished

Here's the finished blocks from those pieces which I showed cut the other day. I have now made all of those small brown cross blocks into larger blocks. They aren't assembled into tops, of course, but at least they are larger!

Brown in progress

I haven't yet finished bordering all those brown cross blocks, but I have at least cut all the companion strips for them. It's a step!  

Rail Fence Blocks with cream

Showed these the other week in progress; here they are finished. There are more than one of most of the combos, but not an equal number, as I was using up small pieces of multicoloured fabrics.

Brown with circles

Another set like the ones with dots, but this time with a different alternating fabric. Again, it's  a 16 block set, so it will make a nice small quilt for Linus.  The rest of the brown crosses will have borders, though, not be made into four patches...

A bit of brown

So I decided to pull some small brown blocks with crosses out of my block stash and turn them into larger, bordered brown blocks, with cross centres. This will help reduce my brown fabrics, perhaps get them from two boxes into one, as well. Here's the start of it; more to come!

A bit more stitching

Too many of these (multicoloured prints)...

So I made some of these (5 strip rail fence blocks with neutrals)  and cut more to stitch together.

Which gave me these (extra strips for the strip bag and scraps for the scrap basket)

And now there's some space. Not much, but some.

And finally... one last wonky four patch bordered

And here we have the very last of those wonky double four patch tops. The border fabric is actually a print of patchwork quilt blocks. I think this was one of the prints I brought back from the Linus day. Cute!

And another wonky four patch bordered

This one uses a cute print with monkeys on green, to pick up all the green in the blocks.