Market temptations

As you know by now there is nothing I like more than wandering around a market. If that market happens to be in France on a sunny day, well that is even better!

So you can guess where I headed to on our recent trip to France on Monday Market Day. Whilst the fruit and veg are always bountiful and the seafood stall is guaranteed to leave my wallet a bit lighter, there are other equally tempting stalls to be found there.

Oh to have green fingers!

So lovely!

I am sure you can work out why this is my favourite stall of them all! As well as all the ribbons you can see, this stall has boxes and boxes of button cards for sale. Naturally I succumbed :)

Just perfect for more button necklaces, don't you think?

Tomorrow it is my stop on the Travellin' Pic Stitch Blog Hop, so I hope you will get a chance to stop off and check out my English Paper Piecing project. See you then!

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