Travellin' Pic Stitch Blog Hop- Saaremaa Star

Welcome to my stop on the Travellin' Pic Stitch Blog Hop.

Katy and Laura are, hopefully, in full Sewing Summit mode now and I am looking forward to reading all about the Summit and their trip over the next couple of weeks. To keep them busy on their road trip they came up with the idea of creating English Paper Pieced blocks using fabrics inspired by their travel photos.

I was especially delighted when Katy asked if I would like to take part in the Blog Hop as I had two long road trips planned and was casting around looking for projects to take with me. English Paper Piecing fitted the bill perfectly. The Blog Hop carries on until the end of November, you can check out the full schedule here  On November 30th everyone will have an opportunity to link up their projects to be in the running for these fabulous prizes, so don't miss it!

Sponsored by Paperpieces.com, FabricwormPink Castle Fabrics ,  Marmalade Fabrics, the Fat Quarter Shop, WantItNeedItQuilt, and Aurifil.

Full details for competition entry can be found here.

I have been living in Riga, Latvia for four years and in that time we have done our best to explore as much of the Baltic States as possible. Our favourite trip to date was to the island of Saaremaa, off the coast of Estonia. We visited in September last year when the weather was glorious and the island really looked its best. Being an island, fishing naturally plays a big part in community life, but I don't think many of the fisherfolk look like the statue we found a few yards from our hotel in the island capital Kuressaare :)

They do look very happy though, don't they? This photo always makes me smile, it seems to me that the poor man at the back of the boat is really taking the strain, whilst his lady companion is having a great, high-stepping time:)

I used Play Crafts palette builder to generate a colour palette for my EPP block and then ordered these fabrics from Backstitch, well it was a perfect excuse to indulge in a little bit of retail therapy! I had never used a palette builder before but it was so easy I shall definitely be tempted to use it again.

Flying Geese Marine in Quilt Blocks by Ellen Luckett Baker, Redig - Grey Plank in Bella by Lotta Jansdotter and Pearl Bracelet - Green in Hello Pilgrim by Lizzy House.

The block I came up with for these fabrics was inspired by a pattern in a book of Islamic Geometric Designs by Eric Broug. These designs, which are frequently based upon hexagons or pentagons really lend themselves to this type of piecing, so I will be hunting through the book to create more blocks I am sure. I have no idea if this block has a name already, so I have christened it the Saaremaa Star!

If you would like to recreate this block you will need these templates.

They are a 2" hexagon, 3 x 1" hexagons and 6 x 1" tumbling diamond blocks. I downloaded all of the templates from here

Once you have cut out the 1" hexagons you will need to cut them in half from point-to-point.

I cut from the three fabrics 1 x 2.5" hexagon for the centre of the block, 3x 2" hexagons for the 6 half hexagon shapes and 6 x 1.5" diamond shapes. Again you will need to cut the 2" hexagon fabric pieces in half point-to-point. Baste the fabric pieces around the shapes. Then the block goes together like this

Of course once you have started EPP you may find, like I did, that one block is not enough and basting pieces is just so easy to do on the move, so you might end up with something like this!

And this!

Then once you have joined all these together you might end up with something like this!

I haven't decided exactly what to do with these yet, but with another road trip from Riga to Amsterdam in the offing, I suspect there will be a few more of them before too long :)

If you end up having a go at these blocks or any of the blocks from the Blog Hop, don't forget to link them up on November 30th!




If you haven't already, check out yesterday's post from Jessica at Life under quilts, her palette is the essence of New York and if you are new to EPP, definitely have a look at her video. Tomorrow's stop on the Blog Hop is with Catherine at Knotted Cotton

Bees and WIP's

 October seems to have raced up on me, the first week is gone already and until today I hadn't even looked at any of my Bee Blocks or BOM's. Today though, I decided to bite the bullet and get at least one of the Bee Blocks sorted.

This month the colour for the Sunday Morning Quilts Bee block is orange. I would have said before I started that I didn't have much in the way of orange scraps, but apparently I was wrong.

Clearly I have more of an orange thing going on than I thought!

September's blocks for the SMQ Bee were waiting in our postbox when we returned from our road trip. I have not really thought about the blocks that I receive from the Bee as I have been so concerned with getting my own in on time. Now that we are almost 5 months in to the Bee though I have suddenly realised that in a couple of months time there will be enough blocks for a quilt. I would never have made 2 blocks a month for myself but I am quite happy to make them for someone else! So having the bones of a quilt comes as something of a bonus :)


Since the last look at my WIP list I have signed up for two Blog Hops and a swap, so the to-do list gets longer instead of shorter. It currently looks like this;

Ongoing

• 7 blocks of In Color Order HST BOM ( 3 blocks behind schedule)
• (Almost) Irish Chain quilt basted
• 9/24 Zakka-style SAL projects completed
• Teatime quilt pieced, backed and basted 
• 5 blocks of NY Beauty QAL completed and fabric cut for remaining 5 blocks
• 14 blocks of Craftsy BOM completed (2 months behind schedule) 
• 12 Sunday Morning Quilt Bee blocks completed (on schedule)
• 3 Star of Africa Bee blocks completed and sent (on schedule just!)
• Travelling Pic Stitch Blog Hop project  (My day is October 12th)

Waiting

• Indigo and violet rainbow cushions
• Last block of Sampler quilt
• Holiday Cushion Blog Hop
• Hoop-la-la swap 

 I am going to have to admit sometime soon that some of those projects in the Ongoing list have stopped going anywhere!

Here is another sneak peek of my project for the Travelling Pic Stitch Blog Hop.If you haven't already checked out the posts on the Blog Hop do have a look. The Blog Hoppers have been asked to select a travel photo from which they create a colour palette to match up fabric for an English Paper Piecing project. There have been some stunning photos posted already with great EPP blocks to match. Check them out below.

1 Katy @ I'm I'm A Ginger Monkey

2 Charlotte @ Lawson And Lotti

3 Danielle @ DJ Coolbear

4 Chelsea @ Pins & Bobbins

5 Heidi @ Fabric Mutt

6 Erin @ Missy Mac Creations

7 Sarah @ The Last Piece

8 Jo @ My Bearpaw

9 Kirsty @ You Had Me At Bonjour

10 Ramona @ Ramona Rose
And in the Let's Get Acquainted Blog Hop this week's Bloggers are

Oct 9
         Amy from Sew Incredibly Crazy
         Foster from Foster Reviews It
Oct 11
        Chrissie from madebyChrissieD
        Marit from Sew, love, live
Plenty there to inspire you!

Linking up to WIP Wednesday

Bits and Pieces

We have been on a road trip, driving from Riga to SW France and back so I have a lot of catching up to do. Although most of our trip was on the main roads we did take a couple of detours to have a break from service station food!

Our route took us through Poland, Germany and France and here are some examples of the places we have been.

Check out the patterns on that German town house, do you think a quilter might live there? If not, they definitely should.

Naturally I took some sewing along with me. My day on the Travelling Pic Stitch Blog Hop is fast approaching so I needed to get in some English Paper Piecing practice. Basting is easy but I discovered that bumpy roads and careful sewing are not a good mix. Still it is nice after a long day on the road to have this little pile to show for it.

They should keep me busy for a few more days.

As a break from the stitching I also took along some buttons to have a go at making a necklace in the August issue of Beads and Beyond. The necklace design was based upon the eye of a peacock feather but I adapted it slightly as I had found some Mondrian-inspired buttons that I wanted to use.

The necklace is really simple to make as the buttons are threaded and then knotted onto the cord. This pink necklace was my first attempt and not bad even if I do say so myself :) I found when wearing it though that the buttons were rather too big as they tended to fall forward rather than lie flat. So I had another go with smaller buttons.

This is a much better size. I think too, because the large buttons are flat rather than with a lip like the black buttons above that makes it lie flatter too.

My daughter-in-law admired these buttons when I bought them, so with her birthday coming up next month I think they may just find themselves heading her way!

Now I am off to catch up on all the happenings in Blog land that I have missed :)

Linking up to TNT Thursday