Unpacking the mojo

I've had a self enforced break from sewing after we made a rather snap decision to sell our home of 30 years and find a place in the country. This meant converting my sewing room back to a bedroom, for enhanced saleability (I might have just made up that word) and packing away my design wall and all traces of sewing. After renovating and selling whilst working full time I was using the bus commute time to either catch up on sleep or to text and email agents, tradies, lawyers or bankers. No time to sew.

Unpacking the mojo

Anyway I have recently been able to unpack some of the sewing, spread the love throughout the house and finish all of the AWS blocks.

AWS Block #22

AWS Block #21

Sometimes I hand piece and sometimes I piece by machine, sometimes I even combine both techniques in the same block. I like the accuracy of hand piecing so I thought 'why not prep for machine piecing as per hand piecing?' So for this block I drew lines and pinned as I would for hand piecing.

Quite a good result but I'm afraid this block didn't quite pass muster with the G'nT Sisters At 2am (after some wine) the leaves I had drawn myself were thought to resemble "reindeer on steroids" and it was too brown. It has now been renovated and admittedly it does look better now.

AWS Block #12

I've really missed having the design wall, which is currently living with Judy. I do have visitation rights so I was able to lay out all the AWS blocks and get advice on their placement.

Did you notice Judy's AWS on the spare bed? We were lying on top of it (ugg boots and all!) whilst trying different layouts. Now I 'just' need to finish the broderie perse for the outer triangles.

Last Saturday Judy and I dropped in to Linda's book launch in the Barn last Saturday. We purchased a copy of her new book Treasures from the Barn published by Quiltnania.

Me, Linda & Judy

It was great seeing Linda and all the original antique quilts that the book is based on,this gave us inspiration for our current and future projects. We were both taken by the Little Boys Britches quilt behind us in the photo above and the first quilt below.

Little Boys Britches

Chocolate Mill detail

Chocolate Mill border detail

Unfinished block showcasing Linda's precise hand-piecing from Fireworks 

Brenda's Bounty

It was also a wonderful thrill to meet Marianne (DreamWeaver) in person. She has been a Dear Jane and design wall inspiration for me.

And what would a blog post be without a Chester County Criswell block? So I'll finish with Block #24 that I completed last night.

Cheers

Carole