Choose Your Own Block-Along 30/9/14

I decided to take part in Choose Your Own Block-Along in order to work on two quilts, those of you who read my post on Sunday saw the first two blocks of my "H for Heywood"quilt  those who didn't see 

post here

in addition to the H blocks I'm going to be working on my Pineapple blocks, a section already made below

This morning I have put together a few more H blocks and do they go together quickly!!

You get two for the price of one with these blocks, a positive and a negative. You can see this in the post mentioned above from Sunday.

Excuse the large Mystic Quilter covering the bottom of the block photo, my camera seems to have developed a mind of its' own, possibly due to me fiddling around with settings trying to get the White Balance just as I want it. Our local Arts Centre are running a series of classes on working with your digital camera so I'm off to see if there are any vacancies!!!

I have a button on my sidebar for the Block-Along you can  read all about it  and there is a weekly link up so I'll head along to
Live A Colorful Life
hope you'll come along for a visit.

Orange Scraphappy Saturday - "H"

The last Saturday of the month for our colour Orange.

 Over this month I have made 10 orange cats so this week thought I would post a shot of the start of a quilt mentioned  yesterday the "H" quilt to be known now as the "H for Heywood" quilt. This  will be made during the Choose Your Own Block Along -  my first link-up on Monday  (see the button on my sidebar)  - and these first two blocks, whilst not totally orange (no surprise there) do have orange in there. Yes they are bold bright colours but there will be a mix of different contrasts in the blocks as I go along. Thanks again to Wanda at Exuberant Color who designed this block and shared the directions for making it on her blog.

H for Heywood

H for Heywood

NOTE: I have been having problems with my camera, the settings seem to have a mind of their own at the moment so please bear with me if there are one or two issues with my photos this should be sorted by my next post Monday. Ther next fun bit will be to see if I get the distortion when I link up with RSC 2014, fingers crossed - again! See what everyone else has completed in orange  here at RSC 2014.

A slow week

Definitely a slow week - only managed three more borders on Cotton Candy

it was pretty gusty outside yesterday and the only way I could take a photo was to drape over the trellis gate. This quilt would have fit on my large design wall but Desert Rose is on there waiting for final borders, my next size moveable wall has Red Sea Sunset sitting there waiting for one last diagonal to be sewn, I obviously need to get on and finish these two projects. Just realised I still have Fruit Salad waiting for seven more blocks, must go hunt it out.

Been cutting lots of strips, the ones above are a few of the 2" Kaffe Collective fabrics these are intended for a quilt for one of our grandsons and as our surname begins with H what could be better than an H quilt which I first came across on Wanda's blog Exuberant Color, I've made a start on this so another quilt on the go.

I really need two or three days of un-interrupted sewing time to clear the first two three projects but there's always meals to make, house to clean, gardening, pets to feed, blog posts to read etc. and before I know it bed time has arrived. Obviously I need to be better organised.

On the plus side the iris above has opened, I love these and thought I had lost every last one but seems not.

Okay time to work on my organisational skills  - until next time have a happy weekend.

Seems to be a problem for folk double clicking on a photo  - they seem to be overlaying my post totally and blogger doesn't seem to be playing when I try to alter settings - apologies will try and fix for next post.

Orange cats are back for RSC 2014

I seem to be back into my sewing again after a difficult two weeks, a big thank you to everyone who left a comment for me and emailed privately, I so appreciated your kind thoughts.

My favourite kitty is on the top left, next favourite is middle of the bottom row. I must get them all out of the box one day next week and have a play around to get an idea of how the quilt will take shape.

I have nothing else to show this post but more during the week, I need to add more strips to Cotton Candy and get on with the blue hexagons.

Beautiful orange projects going on here at RSC 2014

Hope you all have a happy quilting week

Scrappy Cats and Around The World Bloghop

Forgive me for combining two posts into one.

I would have been sharing more kitties this week and I was also due to take part in the blog hop mentioned in the post title this Monday 15th. Sadly I can do neither.

On Monday evening last week we lost one half of our very best friends of 33 years (husband and wife) after a long battle with cancer. The last few weeks have been a horror time watching him cope with tremendous courage the pain and ravages that this disease brings upon the body and mind.

We have spent a lot of time over the past week with his wife and family, attended his funeral on Friday  and I have been unable to give any time to my quilting, my heart was just not in it. For those who were going to visit me for the blog hop please accept my apologies.  I had thought I could really try today and tomorrow to complete my kitties and to get together a good post for the "hop" but sorry,  just not able to do it. Even the kitties couldn't tempt me this week.

I hope you will understand.

My kitties will be back next week.

Maureen

Oranges on Saturday RSC 2014

 On to the colour of the month - Orange

my cat collection is steadily growing and I do have quite a lot of orange fabrics ranging from very light through to the background colour of Oxblood - fabric by Philip Jacobs. Oxblood Pansy will be on show next week and I have to thank Wanda over at Exuberant Color for giving me the information that this Pansy was  Philip Jacobs 01 and that the Oxblood and Sunny colorway are now very rare, I'm so pleased I have some in my stash.

I wanted to make a small pillow cover  to sit on a Baltic pine sea-captains chair in a corner of our lounge, something simple and quick. Pulled out a handful of strips from my clean up cuts bin and came up with this top, yet to be finished with backing.

Obviously the strips are random and uneven but I had to square off the edges.
I'm happy with it and think I could sit for a whole day making these.

Now, for my next miracle I am going to try to link up with Angela and everyone making beautiful orange projects for Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2014. Those of you following these posts will possibly have picked up that I have been having trouble shrinking down to thumbnail size for the link, don't know why my mind has gone blank on the quick process I used earlier in the year.
Let's give it another try!

Still not getting it!!!! Maybe some incompatibility between the editing programme on my computer with Mr Linky, perhaps another programme is called for. Anyone use Picmonkey??

Wednesday WIP - Singing the Blues

Work in Progress

One more diagonal seam to sew on Red Sea Sunset

Yesterday I cut the next three strips for Cotton Candy, as I'm now getting into the longer lengths I'm thinking about a light spray starch on the fabric before I cut to give a little more stability.

Sorry about my shadow!

One of the quilts in Kaffe Quilts in Morocco tempted me, well more than one tempted me, but as I had quite a lot of blues not dissimilar to the one used in the book all I needed to buy in new was the border fabric and three colour ways of Aboriginal Dots. These will hopefully be with me next week.

Singing the Blues

The quilt is not really quite as dark as this, the light was not the best when I took the photograph.

I started cutting fabrics yesterday but instead of cutting the given templates from the book I'm using my Accuquilt die which is around a half inch larger than the size given and I have the triangle die to fit. 

The straight cut edge of the hexagon is four and a half inches, the one in the book is four but I can either have a larger quilt or cut out one row of hexagons on the top and one side. Hope to get on with more cutting today and then it's on to orange cats tomorrow.

Scatty Cats!!

I believe it is Labor Weekend in the USA, I hope you're all having a lovely weekend.

This post should really have gone out earlier but I've been down with a nasty bug and only just feel energised enough to sit at the computer and write and of course it's cat time!!! Ten green cats are all settled in their box with the others but I need a few more than the 120 originally planned so I think I'll throw in a few different ones over the next four months.

and

A package of new fabrics arrived last week and these two above are Martha Negley prints, I fell in love with both when I saw them and have the egg fabric in two more colour ways. 

 Visiting the local Bernina shop ended with me  buying a few "modern" fabrics which I normally just wouldn't go for but the peachy colour is a favourite,  there is a metre piece of the floral and a half metre of the others.

No plan for these at the moment but I have a few ideas bubbling away.

Heading over to Angela and RSC 2014

Yes, on the thumbnail in the Linky I am showing an older pic of two cats, having problems for some reason with reducing to thumbnail in my programme!