crocus, finished quilt, blocks

Here is my stack and slash quilt all finished,  I added the binding and feel job well done.

I do think the red is a bit loud and unfortunately the hand quilting does not show too well in the photo, I used hand quilting cotton,  next time   if there is a next time I will use a thicker thread, maybe a perle 12 or 16,   it is good to be learning as I go down this path of quilting.
I am not sure what I will do with it, at the moment it is on the back of my cream couch which adds a bit of colour.

I have also done the first 3 blocks for the quilt on the create and craft channel with Jennie Rayment These blocks are 14" finished.

Pineapple block,   this one was tricky for me,  there was a template for it but I just used an ordinary square,no point is spending over £20 for something I will only use once.  It was not done the paper foundation way.  This is one block I will not be making many of.

Petal block,    I have not attached it yet to the backing fabric,  they suggest to use interfacing on the petal  to back it with so you get a good shape prior to attaching it to the white fabric by hand.   Was pleased with the points meeting in the centre, quite an achievement for me.

Dresden plate,   this uses 20 pieces and we were told to make it as 4 quarters with 5 in each and mount them individually on 7. 5" pieces of fabric then join them together as the quantity of fabric were told to buy would not stretch to a 14. 5 piece,  I think I will have enough fabric however so I will redo it as a whole plate instead, if you know what I mean,  not sure I do.
The next class is later this month and when complete this will make up as a quag, nine blocks on the front and one on the inside for when it is being used as a bag.

Yesterday I did a block for Sara of Sew me and her charity blocks for  bee blessed,  a heart which I will pop into the post,     Sara has one a month so I will try  and stick to doing at least one a month as they are made up into charity quilts.  Being february I expect you can guess it would be a heart.

Now for as photo of the first crocus that appeared in the garden a couple of days ago,   still a very mild winter, we have had the temperature drop below freezing just a couple of times and today the sun is pouring in on me as I am doing this blog.

hexie block, tula,quilting

Today I am posting a photo of the BOM for january in the hexie challenge.   I am not sure what I am going to have as a background for these blocks,  they need squares 15.5" so are quite large,  think I might go for cream/white as I will be doing the blocks in different colours using up what I have,  I have no idea what all the blocks will be like. I think this is the one problem about BOM`s when you  do not know what the block is like until it is released.

I rather like my multi coloured snowflake

Here I have taken a photo of it on top of a largish hexie flower block

The lounge floor is today covered with the remaining 76 blocks from the Tula sampler,   have not arranged them in any order, I have 10 rows with 7 blocks on each and 6 extra blocks so think I might make one more so it will be 11 by 7,   or maybe I might remake the 16 blocks which I have put together in the batik quilt    well maybe not! This way I would have a quilt using all 100 blocks,   the more I think about it the more I think I might do it, must check I have enough black fabric first.

quite pleased with this 

Now for the slash and stack piece,  yesterday I hand quilted it,   I drew circles randomly over it and around the edge a few half circles.  I used gutermans hand quilting cotton in yellow.   Now I have 2 fingers on each hand the worse for wear from being pricked with the needle,  I do try and wear a thimble on my right hand but it is not very successful,  I feel they need to be longer as they do not stay on too well and I always feel I need to push them further onto my finger but there is not the room to do it.   Will need to wash the work when I have added the binding to remove all traces of blood and also the pencil lines.  I am planning to use some dark turquoise to bind it with.

Yesterday we had our first snow of the winter,  it only lasted for abut 5 minutes but the flakes were pretty big,  I thought looking at the sky in the morning that we might get snow but it had not been forcasted.