Cakes, Cards and Cherries

A few weeks ago I signed up for the Novelty and Colors Layer Cake Swap organised by Hilachas where we signed up to send in 12 Layer Cake cuts of a novelty fabric and the same amount of a pre-allocated solid (or a fabric that reads solid) and received in return 24 different Layer Cake cuts back. Well, because I had a bit of indecision about whether my chosen fabrics were suitable or not I ended up sending two lots of each, and so received 48 Layer Cake cuts in the post yesterday!

Here are the Solids I received

And here are the Novelty Layer Cakes. I am delighted with the variety of fabrics I received and can't wait to use them in some of the upcoming Zakka-style SAL projects!

In an earlier post I showed you the plans for my mini for Sew Happy Geek's Play mini quilt challenge, and I am pleased to have some more progress to show on this. Having calculated and cut the pieces for the paper-pieced corners of the playing card, I set to this morning to sew the blocks.

The letter block is from Carol Doak's 300 Paper Pieced blocks book, and has been re sized from the original 3" block to 4" by 3" to fit the planned dimensions of the quilt. The observant amongst you will see that this quilt will be based upon the Ace of Diamonds card, and the really observant amongst you will notice that I am missing a Diamond block! This is why -

When supposedly trimming the last corner I managed to cut off completely the previous corner!!! That will teach me to "just fit in a bit of sewing before breakfast!". Lesson, hopefully, learnt! Next time I am cutting I will not also be working out all the things that I have to do that day.

Having bored you all with my less than stellar attempts at crochet, I am sure you will be as pleased as I am (well maybe not!) that at long last, I have a crochet post that isn't cataloguing my mistakes or pleading for help. Determined that I will master this crochet business, I found a pattern for a Cherry Brooch in an old copy of Making magazine. The pattern was designated for beginners, so couldn't be too taxing I thought, and lo and behold! it wasn't and here is the proof - my very first successful crochet project!

So on that successful  note here is my round-up for this week.

Completed projects

• Shades of Green, Fleur Bleu, Checkered Heart, Orange and Reindeer cushions 
• Orphan Block needle roll, Pieced Arc Tea towel, Purse and Padded Hangers Tutorial
• Sunflower and Sew Happy QAL quilts
• All blocks of FPPFTT   
• First crochet project! 

Ongoing 

• 3 blocks of In Color Order HST BOM (2 blocks behind schedule) 
• (Almost) Irish Chain quilt basted 
• 4 Zakka-style SAL projects completed (1 project behind schedule)
• First border of teatime quilt completed, blocks calculated and fabric cut
• 5 blocks of NY Beauty QAL completed and fabric cut for remaining 5 blocks
• 8 blocks of Craftsy BOM completed (on schedule) 
• Play mini-quilt challenge design finalised and drafted, 3 corners pieced!
• Yellow rainbow cushion waiting to be appliqued

 
Waiting 

• Indigo and violet rainbow cushions
• Last block of Sampler quilt
• Amy Butler bag 
• Bag Making Bible Fashionista Bag 
• Dragon Bag
• Patchwork Block bag
• Christmas mini quilts

 Not much movement on that waiting list, one of these days there will be!

Linking up to Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday and Sew Much Ado We Did it Wednesday and Esther's WOW