Oh the Pain!

You will perhaps have noticed my comments about the Oh My Stars quiltalong that I'm following. The latest star to make is called Woven Star. There were warnings about bias edges, and using spray starch, and I thought "Yeah, yeah, I can do this". Well, we all know where pride goes, don't we?

So I cut really, really carefully, sprayed with starch, and started trying to put the block together. I knew how I planned the block to look, but every time I moved a few pieces to sew or press, it took me ages to organize them again.  Headache, and mental cursing. Chain piecing is out. Then I found the block was coming out a bit small, obviously my 1/4 inch seam was at fault. Out with the seam ripper!

Finally with a sigh of relief I assembled the block, pressed it, and found...I'm short in a couple of places and will lose the star points! Grrr!

Worst of all, I looked down the table at my quilt group, and saw that one of the members is sewing a quilt that is composed of the exact same star!  Completely by coincidence!   And she wasn't gritting her teeth, and the blocks looked beautiful.  See what I mean about being overconfident?!!!

Here's a pic of the offending block. I'm not sure there are going to be any more like this one in the quilt. Or should I take a deep breath and try again?

Till next time

Sue

Swooning and Stars

Welcome to WIP Wednesday!

We've just come out of a week of really cold freezing weather, even the dogs didn't want to go out. So I stayed in and sewed. See, there is a silver lining!

I got a request for a laptop sleeve, so I made my first one. It was fun!
The pattern is from Ali Foster, she does such great bags, and the patterns are super easy to follow.
Here's my sleeve:

The new owner sells real estate, so I thought the shark was appropriate. I won't tell if you don't!

I've been working away at my Swoon blocks.

Here are my latest two:

They are both big, 22 1/2 inches. I'm nearly finished another 3 in the medium size and then I'm going to start QAYG and see how they all fit together.

I'm also working on my Oh My Stars quiltalong. It certainly keeps you moving when you don't want to fall behind! Since my last post I caught up with the little stars and made 2 more large and 4 more medium stars. Here we are so far:

This isn't the layout, I'm just putting them up as I do them, but I'm happy with how it's shaping.
There's already another star to make, so I'm behind again, but in a manageable way!

How was your week? Actually this post covers two weeks, and I'm happy with the progress!

Linking to

Till next time, have a good week sewing!

Sue

Design Wall Monday

There are two design walls (aka plastic tablecloths) in my room.

First are my Swoon blocks.

It's coming along quicker now since I joined the Swoon-along group on Flickr.
The link is on Katy's page here:

 

I'm not sure if you can get to the group another way. Anyway, there are nearly 450 members, and some wonderful pictures. Take a look, you'll be amazed how beautiful the blocks are, in all sorts of different fabrics and colours. What a pattern it is!

The problem is, (isn't there always a problem!), that I have 3 sizes of block, and no idea how I'm going to fit them together. Any ideas?

I took this picture of the layout plan

and according to this, I've got about 9 blocks still to do, and then a jigsaw puzzle.

Second design wall:
Oh My Stars quiltalong. See my sidebar for the button.
Here are my stars so far:

 These blocks are turning out well, but the problem here (!) is that I am at least 15 tiny stars behind, 5 in each star variation, and since there is the same amount of work in a little star as in a big one, I've got quite a task to catch up!

Fortunately, today is a free day, no pressing task, and it's cold out. Brr! So I'm going to stay in, and get to some of those little stars.

I'm linking to Patchwork Times Design Wall Monday

Till next time

Sue

Oh My Stars!

Now that the Christmas rush is over, I feel I can do some more sewing without guilt. Well, there's always some cleaning to do, and the dogs want a walk...

I had fallen behind in this quiltalong, (see the button on my sidebar), not a good omen since it's only recently started. There'll be lots of time for me to fall behind again!

So last night I made 5 tiny stars with pinwheel centres. They take as much time, no, maybe more time than larger squares. You probably already know that, but it doesn't seem fair.

Each star variation has 1 large, 2 medium and 5 small stars. So I've done the Simple Sawtooth Star and one with a pinwheel centre. 13 more variations to go! I'm excited to see what else we can do with this star!

Here's my collection so far:

Till next time

Sue

Linking to:

Take a look at the great projects on the blogs over there. Fun!