First blocks

Having recovered from the euphoria of cutting accurately with an 'omniflex' ruler, I am now able to show you some of my progress!

Yesterday was such a pleasant BH Monday, primarily because I did not do very much! No screaming hoardes of badly behaved children hyped up on sugar and freedom for me! No motorway traffic, or lack of parking spaces, or rugby tackling to get into the shops! None of it! Nil! Nada! I ventured no farther than the few miles to Windsor Great Park, where Nathan and I walked the pooches through tufty grasses and over sodden, almost sponge-like, ground while a fresh and persistent wind blew against us. A quiet, unassuming way to spend an hour.

When we got back and the dogs were finally settled in a contented heap of exhiliration and exhaustion on the floor, I surrendered myself to the call of the quilt! Time to start sewing my first blocks!

I've never used a 1/4" quilting foot before and, frankly, I'm not entirely sure what difference one makes! Perhaps I am going about the whole process incorrectly, but from my experiences yesterday it did not seem to offer an adequate addition to my accuracy that would justify spending ten pounds on the foot in the first place! I'm not complaining at all because, at the end of the day, I did manage to maintain a 1/4" seam allowance, but it did still require a fair level of care and concentration so I am pretty sure that I could have achieved the same results with my standard foot.

Here are a few pictures of the finished 'A' and 'B' blocks. (And yes, these have been 'enhanced'. No matter what I did yesterday these images just looked grey when they were uploaded to the computer. That said, now that I've played around with them the colours do seem to be saturated to almost acidic levels!).

I am pleased that I chose to start my quilting career with the 'Mod Sampler'. Each block increases in difficulty ever so slightly, so it is a good opportunity to build skills. For example,  Block 'B' was almost as simple as Block 'A', except for the fact that you need to precisely match the centre seams. Now, I'm sure this is beginners luck - but look how well they turned out! I'm not being smart or arrogant - I'm just so thrilled that it worked! I was convinced that my blocks were going to be all off centre and wonky!

I have, however, spotted one problem with the project. I had intended to buy plain white or cream cotton to use for the sashing between the patchwork blocks, but some of the fabrics are so pale or contain a high percentage of white within the designs that I do not think this will work. I don't think that a pale fabric will give a definite enough line around the square blocks. So my question is this - what colour sashing should I buy? I want the patchwork squares to 'pop', not merge!!!!

I have a strange sense of guilt having spent time working on my quilt - I hate to get behind in producing new stuff for my 'Folksy' shop! Life is such a balancing act - even with those things that we love!