When I don't have much idea of what to sew, or I've reached a stalemate in a current project, I often just make HST, on spec. I cut a lot of scraps into this triangle shape, so there's always plenty on hand and it involves nothing more strenuous than matching two fabrics together,

I have a container of 2 1/2" ones, and another of 2" finished squares.

I began sewing Broken Dishes units with the 2 1/2"  pile and have amassed quite a box full.

I then sewed some  into 12" squares, using nine of the smaller blocks. I love the rich colours I'm using, and so far I feel no urgency to rush ahead and make heaps of them. At the moment I'm happy to just potter and plod along whenever I feel like it.

I used 2" HST to make this smaller block, containing just four of the broken dishes units,

and tried some pinwheels too, just for a different effect.

I'm not looking to finish anything from these blocks yet, I'm just playing with possibilities.

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A few posts ago I showed some bright scrappy HST that I'd been sewing. I'd been using these as Leader-enders for quite a while, so there was a satisfying pile of them, ready to turn into something. I decided to make these star blocks, and as each one takes 16 HST, and the finished  block only  measures 6 inches I knew it wouldn't be very big. A nice cot quilt that I could whip out easily.

The blocks went together fairly quickly, I chose the sashing and set them into a top, and then I had The Bright  Idea. What about a pieced border?

Yes, a few more of those triangles around the edge should do it...

or what about a double row of them...?

Hmm, have to work out the measurements and get them to turn the corner somehow....

Such a good idea at the time, and I think the result is worth it, but oh my giddy aunt, the extra sewing this entailed! Another two hundred or so HST had me chopping up lots of light fabrics and more of the brights and stitching solidly on this border for many hours.

That's the trouble with leader-ender projects, at certain times they just take over and I become obsessed with finishing them. The idea of slowly piecing the border triangles over the next few months just wasn't an option. I wanted this done, Now!

I couldn't take a good photo of this top for some reason, what looks like red fabric is actually a hot pink that my camera couldn't capture. These bright colours are so not my style, and yet I enjoyed working with them. Now that I'm done with this, it's back to the softer reproduction fabrics I love, browns and greys and cream. At least I've proved I can step outside my comfort zone occasionally...

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Happy first birthday to this little cutie! She is so beautiful and has the most happy laid-back personality. She enjoys an adoring fan club, especially uncle Matt and her two nannas.

She has strawberry blonde hair, with ginger highlights and wonderful blue eyes, and I often think how how our mum would have loved to see her. She always wanted a redhead in the family.

 I'm loving having her so close so we can play a part in her life.

Love you Isobel!....

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 I sewed the borders on my four patch top, at last. I love this grey brown fabric and I think it calms down the busyness of those blocks nicely.

I like the way the yellow border doesn't turn the corner, it makes things a little bit different.

I've been calling this block "Abacus" because the little squares looked like beads on a rail to me.

I enjoyed making the four patches, and setting them on point in the block.  I might be making more of them at some stage, I don't feel as if I've finished with them yet.

For something that is completely outside my usual colour choices I've been playing with some bright scraps, making lots and lots of 2" half square triangles. It's been fun, but I do adore my more sober reproduction fabrics.

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 I've made progress on this top, and the blocks are all set together now. I think I'll have to photograph it in daylight to get a true indication of the sashing colour, The camera insists that it's bright yellow, and it's not.

I tried all sorts of clever pieced border ideas, and the blocks rejected them all. I was in the mood to do a heavily pieced border using more four patches- lots of mindless sewing, and using up heaps more of those small scraps. But the top says no, so who am I to argue? I've settled the border question now, and I'm cutting and sewing the strips for it, but I'm still a tad disappointed.

I can hardly wait to finish this and add the fabric to my 'Used' total. I've only added 22.25  metres of fabric to the stash this year, and I've used 22. This top will put me in the black, and I can feel virtuous about how my stash is diminishing...HA!

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 I saw this quilt on ebay years ago and loved the unusual design. Quite by chance I found it again recently on the Stella Rubin Antique quilt site. I had about four of the blocks sewn together, and lots of four patches but they were scattered around in various places in my sewing room.


I found the blocks that I was looking for, as well as all the containers of random bits I'd sewn together as leader-enders. Once I'd put everything in one place I had enough to finish the twenty four blocks I needed. I then had to make sixteen half blocks for the sides, which seemed to take more time than the actual blocks.

I decided that I had enough pink sashed quilts in the works, and I'd change the colour to something else...this yellow is a bit brighter than my usual choices, but I'm liking it. The colour is off, it's darker and not as vivid as it looks in the photo, but still very cheerful.

I don't know what I'll do for the borders yet, but I still have piles and piles of four patches left over. They really are the perfect block for leader-enders, which I suppose is why I ended up with so many. They may end up in a border or they might be the start of another top, but I'm not sick of them yet and it's nice to always have them on hand.

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I'm easily distracted when I'm fishing through my old projects. I was looking for a top I'd started with four-patches, so I could join in with the current craze, and came across these blocks. As I pulled them out they landed on a bolt of fabric I'd chosen for something else, and Keryn said "Sash them with that, it will look great!" Talk about spontaneous decisions....

So in between other projects I cut sashes and posts, and started sewing this together. I have a small design wall in my sewing room, and I left it laid out on that, and just did a bit here and there. Very no stress and no hurry, and I enjoyed simply looking at it.

Then I chose the border fabric, stitched that on, and it felt like a little top had magically come into being. I always say I don't make small quilts, but over the years I seem to have accumulated a few little ones, usually made from blocks that have been abandoned and I just want to finish them off quickly.

The strange thing is, I usually fall in love with the idea again, and now I want to make a lot more of these blocks and make a large quilt from them. I just adore them, and they were very easy to cut out and sew. For every project I finish I seem to think of two more, I'll never get anywhere at this rate. But who cares? Where am I actually going? I just love the process and the fun along the way. If ever I stand in my sewing room with all my projects done and no fabric left, I can't imagine that what  I feel would be happiness.....

In other news Pippi decided yesterday that the temperatures had dropped sufficiently to justify sleeping under her quilt, as opposed to on top of it. I found her snuggled into a nice little mound on the bottom of the bed, sighing with contentment- she hates the hot weather almost as much as I do.

I blogged about these blocks back in June of 2013, and when I got to the end of that post I found a picture of Pippi, wrapped in the same quilt, how odd. And then I realised that the border fabric for another quilt I referred to was the same fabric I used for the border on this top.

Had I subconsciously linked the blocks to this fabric way back then? I might be impressed with the mind's powers, except I can't be trusted to leave the kitchen while boiling eggs these days.....

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After we finished  four customer quilts last week  I decided to throw one of my tops onto Millhouse. Along with my commitment to binding an old project every month, I also want to quilt more of my own works. We have cupboards full of beautiful tops, and it's so easy to put a customer quilt on the machine and neglect our own.

For something easy I chose Floribunda, one of Bonnies patterns. I wanted to do an edge to edge, and I knew that would suit this busy top. No sense putting custom work on a top unless it will show up, and these florals would hide any detail.

I chose one of Keryn's designs, Winter Rose, to keep the floral theme going.

Remember all those blocks I rejected for the front? They found a home on the back, along with lots of other floral fabrics, cut into 9 or 10" squares. And STILL there are more of these fabrics in my stash, sigh. Not enough for another quilt like this, but they're lurking in odd corners.

At the beginning I thought I might use other pastels for the background instead of just yellow, hence this pale green block. I didn't really like the effect, and I didn't have enough pallid fabric anyway. So the block ended up with the others on the back.

I forget how satisfying it is to hang up a newly finished quilt and look at all that glorious texture. There are so many memories bound up in this, of the places I bought the fabrics, the piecing, the setting together, making the back and now the quilting. I marvel at all that fabric out of my stash, about 13 metres I think, and the great feeling of knowing that I made something lovely out of all those bits and pieces. And now if I can only get around to binding it in a timely manner, it will be completely done.

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I based the idea of my  blue quilt on a photo I saw on a blog, and then I couldn't remember where I'd seen it. I finally worked out it was Jo's Country Junction, and I found the post in question. Lots of inspiration in those vintage quilts. (Go and visit her blog and read the archives, soo much entertainment there! And check out their new book too)

This is something that we miss out on in Australia, you don't commonly find old quilts anywhere, unless it's at a dealer or a quilt show. We did have at least one quilt in our history- our Mum clearly remembered a yo-yo quilt that her grandmother had made but it wasn't valued and was lost or fell apart. And technically I suppose it wasn't a 'proper' quilt anyway.

I once found a beautiful crazy quilt at a second hand store in the eighties, but they wanted $75 for it and I was too poor to even think about spending that much on a textile I couldn't use because it was so fragile. Keryn and I call these items 'archival' which means that we're rescuing them so they can be preserved, but they can only be stored away, never used. It would be nice to save them all, but we're not a museum, and we have to be selective in what we buy now.

The place where Jo saw those quilts was called Clear Lake, and I somehow started thinking of the sqinsq top as Blue Lake, and that reminded me of the tin paintboxes that we had as children.

 Most of them were quite small, but a friend of our Mum passed on a clearly superior one when her family had finished with it. It was huge, and while some of the pans were empty, the names were still printed underneath, fascinating things like Viridian and Vermillion and Scarlet Lake and Madder Lake.

Keryn and I and our brother used that box until there was nothing left and no doubt Mum just threw it out without a backward glance. I do wish we still had it and I could read those names again, just to relive the tremendous excitement we felt when we opened the lid and saw all those little rectangles waiting. I went on to have a huge obsession with art and painting and that window into the romantic names of colour was one of the earliest memories of my interest.

So I've decided that my top will be Blue Lake and the brown one will be Madder Lake, but beyond that I don't think I'll venture. Unless I find another pattern because I think I've had enough of the large square in squares...

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Phew, the blue square in square top is done and I can work with something other than mid blue for a change! Perhaps there were so many of these fabrics languishing in my stash because I found them quite boring to work with in the first place. I love the finished top, but it almost put me to sleep sewing it! At least there are now three metres less of them in the fabric drawers.

When I was laying these blocks out on the design wall and trying desperately not to have similar fabrics next to each other, I realised the beauty of the true two-colour quilt. If you were only using two fabrics in the whole thing you could start to piece it together right from the start. You could build it row by row and never have to worry about 'placement' because it isn't relevant - every block is identical. I might have to test that out, and see if the tedium of only two fabrics is more than balanced by the ease of construction. It really did take me two days to get these blocks settled (I worked on other projects while I ruminated on the design wall) and it would be nice to skip that step altogether.

Another thing that annoyed me with this top was the pressing; I tried alternating the seams but still ended up with huge bumps at the intersections. In the end I pressed the joining seams open, which I don't like to do. For my next version of this pattern I might press the sqinsq units open and the block seams to one side and see if that works.

As Keryn can testify, I'm even more picky over the "perfect" pressing order than I am about "placement". I'm really not OCD about everything- observe the untouching points in the top- but I'll trade touching points for 'nice and flat' because that matters to me. Pick your battles, and your obsessions...

I was going through this book yesterday, and guess what I found?

Another large square in square quilt. I like the half square triangles around the edge, and I do have lots and lots of greens in my stash.....I hope I don't do something I'll regret later!

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 I'm determined to keep up with Julie's  Binding Blitz this year and finish at least one binding a month. This poor little quilt has been folded up since (ahem) 2008. The binding was made at the same time, so what excuse can I trot out for neglecting to finish it before this?

  I love the look of the soft  purple binding fabric against the white border, and it took about an hour to sew, as I machined the whole thing.

The top was made from pastel fabric swatches from quilt shop samples and the bits of white on white material that had somehow accumulated in my stash. I never buy WOW because it's usually too thin for my liking and the seams shadow through. Some of them also have a hard painted finish which I dislike.
Today  I would just put them in the op shop pile, but back then I was more dedicated to Using Stuff Up. And this little cot quilt did use up every single bit of both pastel squares and WOW fabric, so I was very pleased at the time.

The Statler  was still a great novelty when I quilted this, using a butterfly panto of Keryn's. I quilted a lot of tops in those early months of owning the longarm; it quite went to my head how easily these languishing UFOs could be finished!

Well, not quite finished though, because I didn't keep up with the binding , and in the blog post above I mentioned that I'd just caught up. This little quilt was another wave of unbound projects, some of which I'll be finishing this year, hopefully. I'm glad Julie has motivated me to actually do something about them after all this time.

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