Stained QAL started!

It's been a lovely, relaxing weekend here in Cork. Hitting 2 major work deadlines on Friday, and getting my Solids Swap items finished on Friday night meant that I had a huge sense of mental relaxation all weekend. With nothing major planned, the weekend involved a lot of lounging around in my pjs, having fun with the kids, falling asleep on the sofa in the afternoon, reading the newspapers, cooking proper roast dinners, baking and - of course - a little bit of quilting. Oh yes - and a lovely night out with the girls involving lots of chat over some Pinot Grigio. Sounds great doesn't it? That's because it was.

Finally, weeks after I should have, I finally managed to cut my pieces today for Sarah's Stained QAL. The cutting was pretty complicated for this one, and Sarah did a super guide for it. I am using a FE bundle of Little Apples fabric, as this is a quilt for a new baby girl, and my friend who asked me to make it is about as allergic to pastel pink for girls as I am.

I decided, after spending some time looking at the instructions, that I wasn't going to worry about the direction of the fabric. Quilts get used in all sorts of different ways and can be looked at from lots of angles. I  don't really like them to be all in the one direction, so I just jumped in with the cutting. I also knew that the cutting wasn't going to be terribly economical on this one, as this fabric is crying out for fussy cutting on a lot of the designs, so if I did the directional cutting, it would have used a mountain of fabric!

I took Sarah's advice and piled all my bits into some zip lock bags, ending up with a very satisfying little pile. I went through a whole notebook of post-its, labelling each piece!   It took quite a while, but I managed to keep myself and the kids entertained with lots of loud music and a bag full of playdough (them, not me!)  By the end of it my whole kitchen floor and all their clothes were covered in little bits of playdough (the price you pay for some quiet time!) but its done now, apart from the sashing.

Then I went off to do some trial layouts and see what I thought.

Love :-)

These blocks are going to be great. I think, when I am piecing them, I will probably mix and match around the pieces between the block (there are 3-5 of each block type) to get a better colour distribution in some of the blocks, but that will be easy. I also have plenty of fabric left so if I'm not happy with the balance I can cut some extra to correct it.

The last decision I need to make is the sashing colour. White and Ash are out, as they are already in use in the feature fabrics. I had a look at the other colours appearing in the prints and we're talking a pale pink, or a bright yellow. Neither of which I would be terribly keen on. But as I played around with the blocks this afternoon, I thought that some Kona Coal would work nicely. What do you think? Too dark for a baby girl? Do you have any other suggestions? I'd love to hear them.

After all that cutting, I felt like some chocolate. So we ransacked the cupboards and found the ingredients for brownies. Always a hit in this house, and a guaranteed half hour of fun measuring and stirring and - most importantly - licking the spoon. The kids were in heaven. They are cooling now and I will be taking myself off to test them shortly.

I'll leave you with the soundtrack to the weekend - this song has been playing on the iPod and has been sung constantly by the kids for the last few days (with air guitar action by D!) As they told me - its rocking!

If you've seen my sewing mojo anywhere...

Send it this way please! Seriously, I have barely sewn a thing in the last week and a half and worse still, I've been struggling a bit to work up the enthusiasm to do *anything* except sit in front of the fire at night watching Australian Masterchef, my new fave tv viewing and wishing I was out there in that sunshine. Not like me at all, and no reason for it either, seeing as I'm working on some great projects at the moment that I am totally in love with. I suppose life is getting in the way a little on the home front but hopefully with me having a week off work next week, I can catch up with myself and do some daylight sewing (and taking pics).

Anyway, feeling a bit sad I had no finishes to show you this week and no post since last Friday, I decided to just do a quick progress post.  This is for the quilt that is no 1 on my Winter Stitching list (by the way, I am blown away by how many people have linked up. The linky is open till Monday 31st so there's still time for people sitting on the fence about it. Not thinking of anyone in particular.... really....)

This is a quilt for our friends' daughter - its going to be bigger than a baby size quilt, more a toddler bed size quilt. I suggested a red pink and aqua palette to her mum and was really pleased she liked it - seeing how its my fave colour combo at the moment. And I have GREAT fabrics in these colours.

I drew up a rough sketch but only sat down to work out the details last week of the cutting requirements. Then I did some trial blocks. Its pretty much a square within a square design. There are 3 different blocks, with 3 different sizes of central square (or rectangle for one of them). I was really pleased with these blocks and happy this will work.

 

 These blocks will work in lots of different ways and can be turned around to change the placement of the centre block to really add interest to the design.

I did not give much thought to the cutting that would be required. The acres and acres of cutting. Silly me.

This quilt will have 56 blocks at 8" square cut, 7.5" square finished. Each square needs 5 pieces. That is 280 pieces to cut for the quilt front. Now those of you who know me know I like to take shortcuts. I cut all my fabric for the ATS quiltalong in about half an hour flat - I normally cut lots of layers together. But the square centres really cry out for fussy cutting and the other pieces are all different sizes so its not really that straightforward. I cut for about 2 hours today and got about 2/3 of my centre pieces cut and a small number of the surrounding strip pieces for the blocks. I really love the fabrics and I'm hoping they sew up as well as they look when they are cut!

But the bad news - there's still a pile of fabric waiting to be cut! Oh well, just writing this has made me look forward to it ;-)

 Bring on Tuesday morning when I will be shooing the kids off to play a game, or even watch a dvd (yes, bad mammy moment in planning) and get the rest of these in some kind of order! I won't get to do my FMQ post this week for Cindy's practicealong unless I manage to squeeze an extra hour into tomorrow, which is unlikely. But I will link up next week on the double! And hopefully, by then one of you will have figured out how I can recover my sewing mojo and crank up the productivity again!

PS - there is another giveaway running over on the Sew Irish Facebook page for the last pair of tickets to the Dublin Knitting and Stitching show for Irish peeps - pop over and leave a comment on the giveaway post to enter.