New things...

This week I've been pretty busy working on my Mod Sampler Quilt. After discovering that all of my pieced squares were not the uniform 8.5" required I kinda filed the whole project under 'D' for disappointment and left it festering in a big bag for a while. Every once in a while we would shoot each other reproachful glares but, ultimately, I swallowed my pride and realised that although it will never be perfect it is only my very first quilt and therefore mistakes are to be expected.

My new found enthusiasm was short lived, however, when I started sewing the sashing! Err...yawn! How boring is this task? I'm pretty sure I wont be using sashing again for a while - not that I need to with sooo many gorgeous designs out there to choose from. I'll be posting pictures of my progress soon. Again, the sashing has come together less perfect than I had intended, but I've decided that not pre-washing the cotton batting and allowing the finished piece to take on that lovely puckered, vintage look will cover most, if not all, irregularities! Says a lot for my skills though - I can't even sew straight!

Anyhow - all this talk of quilts leads me onto my next piece of news. Following some online shopping these lovely items arrived at my door on Tuesday:

Denyse Schmidt 'Quilts'

Fabric Mini Bundle from 'Fabric Rehab'

I must confess to being slightly disappointed (a common theme in my life - woe is me....) with the book. Don't get me wrong - it was well thought out, comprehensive in terms of instruction and photographed very well, but it only included 10 actual quilt designs and the remaining 20 projects were largely....errm.... pointless, I guess is the word. Some were lovely, maybe half a dozen. But honestly, as much of a beginner as I may be, do I need an entire project dedicated to demonstrating scrappy patchwork rectangles that are then attached to folded cardboard thereby creating fabric notecards? I think not. That said - here are a couple of faves:

I love this quilt - I tend to lean towards vintage styling but I like how this contemporary design would work in almost any setting. The colour palette is perhaps a little bland for me - but then, it would be easy to spice it up!

I think this may be my favourite project in the book - although, on the picture on the cover you will notice that they had cropped the top and bottom off of the image, so I thought the patchwork lines meandered from one side to the other. I think I would prefer that to these somewhat incongruent 'floating' shapes. Nonetheless, a very striking design and would be a good way of using up lots of scraps.

Finally, I really enjoyed looking at this scarf/wrap design. This is very much the kind of thing I like to make and give away as gifts. The juxtaposition of the thick, dark tweed/wool and the light floral cotton/silk make the piece really eye-catching. I would imagine this would be pretty cool made up in chopped up pairs of jeans too (and who doesn't have at least a hundred pairs of jeans that they hang on to without a hope in hell of ever getting into again?!)

I'm not sure exactly what I intend to do with the fabric that I got but needless to say it will probably find its way into my next quilting project. I made the Mod Sampler Quilt mainly in pastel shades with a few stronger tones thrown in. Next time I fancy using much deeper, richer hues so I think these will be a perfect start to a new collection. Can't grumble for a fiver!

More Soon

Mother's Ruin xxx