I'm sewing another set of blocks together and it didn't seem to be flowing smoothly. I'm loving how the blocks look together, but something wasn't quite right. I finally worked out that it's my leader-ender project that is slowing me down!

I'm making Bonnie's Garden Party, and all the little 1 1/2" pieces are great for chewing up those scraps, and the tiny seams make the units mount up quickly. I'm using orange for the setting blocks instead of red, and they went together fast and kept things moving along. I've made 49 of them and I'll need more but I decided to make a start on the alternate blocks as well.  As soon as I started on the cross blocks I seemed to slow down to a crawl, which slowed down my other project too.

Once I realised that, I examined what was going on, and found that I don't like just grabbing bits out of a huge tray of cut pieces. The orange blocks are totally random and I'm fine with that, but I wanted the cross blocks to use only two contrasting fabrics(besides the white). I seemed to spend a lot of time trying to find a particular colour or a missing square, or discovering that there weren't actually enough pieces of that matching fabric.

So this afternoon I sat down and sorted the whole mess out; I put all the corner bits together so that I can sew them as  units, and added the centre square so that it didn't get used in another block. Then I added the light squares for the corner so that it was all in one little pile ready to go.

I'm so much happier now that I can see where I'm going with this and I can make a rough count of how far along I am and how much more to cut. This tray will live next to the sewing machine, and I'll just pick up a little bundle and sew that together in between the seams of my other project. No more scrabbling around....The only danger is that it looks so tempting I'll have to stop myself sewing them all up at once.

And in other news, I finally bound my Floribunda quilt, it's only a year since I quilted it! I love finishing the binding, I don't know why I put it off.

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 While I have started a couple of new quilts this year, I'm really trying to finish up old projects. These Economy blocks were made years ago to use up some blue scraps, but even making sixty of them didn't deplete the blue container much. I think there was more cream homespun used than anything else; the scrap pile of that fabric did go down quite a bit.

I pulled out twelve blocks as being far too dark (now I have to make another little top using them...) and chose a sandy beige setting fabric that's been in the stash for a very long time. I really like the understated effect of just one colour family (blue) and a single fabric for the setting. I raided Keryn's stash for another half a metre when I didn't have quite enough; it's handy having a backup source of free material if I run out. And she has access to my containers too if she needs something.

I made the border about an inch wider than the sashing, and put a 3" square in square block in each corner.

If I bind it in the sandy colour then all of that fabric will have been removed from my stash, and Keryns too. That's a win, and I've already chosen some backing material so that's about eight  metres gone in total. It's not much, but every little bit helps.

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 The last two months have been crazy busy, including the birth a Keryn's first grand-daughter and Izzies second birthday. While Keryn was away fulfilling her nanna duties with Isla Rose, I did her postie round as well as mine, worked in a friend's cafe and tried to keep up with the customer quilting and family time.
I did keep piecing and achieved things in the sewing room but I haven't had time to take decent photos and blog about it. Hopefully life will be a bit quieter from now on!

Izzy's party was a great chance to catch up with the relatives who live in Adelaide, including my three grandsons. The latest, Eddy, was a bit of a shock because he's grown into a gigantic baby since I last saw him. I honestly could not hold him for long, unless he was resting on a table or the back of a chair. Completely breastfed too- what will he be like when he's eating food?

This is Keryn holding him- he's only five months old but what a big boy!

Izzy looked adorable in her butterfly wings but it was so cold that she had to wear them over her jacket.

I love this photo of her and Uncle Rob, so cute.

It eventually got too much for her and she had to have a nap, it's tiring being the birthday girl.

Now if I can just manage to take some half way decent photos of what I'm working on, I can resume normal blogging....

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