Back in my Sewing Room

Do you find that after you've been away for a week or two, it's hard to get back into the swing of sewing unless you've left mid-project? I had everything tied up before we left other than quilting the Tropical Puzzle quilt. That entailed sewing the backing yardage, so that is the first thing I did. I have the perfect backing, a Wilmington Fabrics piece I'd picked up in the clearance section of Sew Sisters about... eight years ago, knowing it would be a great back somewhere.

This quilt is it. Here is the first little bit. I saw a cool pantograph in an older quilting magazine on a Christmas quilt that I quite liked and thought I could probably free-motion. It doesn't look too much like the panto, other than big swirls, in continuous S shapes, but I'm liking it and I think it's perfect with the tropical theme: swirling winds through palm trees. I'm using Hobbs 100% wool with Connecting Threads 50 wt cotton in Sky, love.

After losing a day to a migraine on Sunday, Monday morning, Thanksgiving Day, I was up early, still in the migraine wooziness and dull pain, unable to tolerate noise stage, but I felt like piecing something. Anything. Maybe it was the triptan pill making my brain go in unusual directions, but I suddenly remembered I had some Sewcial Bee blocks to make. This was a free block of the week from 2017. The blocks were sitting in a little basket in my cupboard along with the remaining fabrics. I started this project in 2018, sewing with a few friends online. We all kind of lost the mojo about half way in. 

When it came time to find the block instructions, I couldn't even remember what the project was called! I first looked in my AGF folder in my MacBook, nothing, and then went slowly through my Quilting folder and finally near the bottom of the list was a folder entitled 'Sewcial Bee Sampler'. That was it! I counted how many blocks I had - 16 - so I opened up Block 17 and off I went, playing with fabric combos to start the day. By suppertime, I had two more blocks done, (moving slowly, with real life and sunshine both in the mix). I bookmarked both Maureen's and Sharon's block 18 posts so I could easily find them again. They don't always follow the pattern colours in the PDFs, so it's interesting to look at what they've done, and then build my own from there.

Block 17 Spools - I took extra time to ensure the lines in the light blue all went the same way.

The frame fabric is not this blue! It's more cream with super-soft pale green, but this block got finished right before supper, and the sun was starting to go down, behind trees with a bit of cloud, so blue tinge it is.

Block 18 Square Peg

After painstakingly getting #17 right, I was annoyed that with making two-at-a-time HSTs, the stripes in one triangle of each pair went the wrong way. I think once it's quilted, it will be fine, but it is making me twitch a bit, so depending on fabric left, I maybe go back in a fix it!

The AGF fabrics I'm using is a line of Maureen's, Fleet and Flourish. Seven more blocks to go; this is not getting tucked away in the cupboard again!