I did it!

Oh my goodness! After having so studiously avoided finishing the centre block last week, on Saturday I bit the bullet and made myself finish the broderie perse. And you know what? It wasn't as fiddly as I'd worked myself up to believe. And I'm very proud of it!

I realise that Di's pattern has appliqued petal shapes in the corner, but I wanted to try something different, and I'm sure you've come to realise that I do like to break rules - in my own 'don't colour too far outside the lines' kind of way! 

Not sure yet how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to ensure that the little rose print will appear in several other places in the quilt. Carefully, because I don't have a lot of that particular fabric.

And because I was on a high finishing up the centre block, I put together a couple more. One using a cheater fabric:

I'm calling this one Block 13, but there are a few blocks almost exactly the same, so it could be used in their place. For this quilt I'm not going to assemble as I go, I would like the freedom to mix the blocks around if necessary.

And on a roll, this block came next. Block 59 - so much fun to make - I foundation pieced the triangle strips and the large rectangles I fussy cut the stripes as straight as I possibly could. Nothing bothers me more than stripes that run in all wonky directions. The outer border had me stymied for a while. I was really hunting through my stash for a cute (but narrow) border stripe. This one was cut at 1.25" wide, so will finish at 3/4". I didn't find what I thought I was looking for, but decided this green from a scrap bag from Karen Styles might work. I probably should have put the green in the middle rectangles, and the stripe in the border, but this is what I've ended up with. And tiny mitred corners too, yay!

There has also been a little hand quilting during late nights watching Wimbledon, but on a wild hair Wednesday evening, I decided I'd like to put together Mrs Claus from the mmmCrafts Twas the Night Ornament series. I finished her this afternoon:

I'm so thrilled with how her red hair turned out on the painted bead head, so I've added red as a colour option for Mrs Claus when people are shopping for painted beads in my Etsy store. I've only made three of the ornaments from this series, but I've painted hundreds and hundreds of heads. I love that people trust me to help them with their crafty pursuits.

So, the first of the Wimbledon mens semi finals has started, so I am going to settle in front of the TV with some stitching and allow myself to be engrossed. I hope you've all had a great week, and we'll chatter soon! xox