Rounding up quarter two

It's time to declare my finishes for quarter two of the Finish-A-Long - I feel a bit of a fraud writing a new blog post when I haven't replied to the comments from the previous one but instead of spending time on the computer (I'm also way behind with other emails and reading/commenting on blog posts) I've been spending a lot of time crawling around my front room floor, listening to/watching six episodes of 'Broadchurch' and a fair few of 'Party of Five' and tackling this:

Hexy quilt top, wadding and backing, ready to tack

and I'm pleased to say that late last night (with blisters on both index fingers!) I finished tacking my quilt and can now start to experiment with threads and choose which I want to use.  Oh, and I suppose I'd better give some thought to exactly how I'm going to quilt it - that very much depends on the threads I choose, though...

I'll reply to comments soon (honest!) but I need to post my FAL Q2 finishes so I can link up.


I had three things on my Q2 list (knowing full well that I didn't stand a hope in hell of finishing one of them - I've really no idea why I added it!), here's how I've got on:


1.  Make my first ever foundation pieced block into a block keeper/stitching book (using Cathi's examples as inspiration).  I managed to do this quite early on in the quarter.  FINISHED!  

I blogged about it here but here's a photo to prove it exists!




2.  Finish off the lovely cushion from Katy (I think this project is a veteran of the FAL list!).  I've just looked through Katy's FAL lists and as far as I can see this cushion has now been on three 'quarter' lists.  Well, no more because it's FINISHED!  It's not a cushion, though, it's a massive stitching/block book:




I decided that the first one I made was really useful but not quite big enough to hold all the pieces for one ET block on one page.  I think this will be big enough as the pages are just over 18" square.  You can see how much room there is for four 6.5" (unfinished) blocks so I think I'll just fit my next ET block on one page, once I've prepped it, that is!  Thank you, Katy, for giving it to me!




The gorgeous chevron ribbon is from The Village Haberdashery.  I initially fell in love with the turquoise ribbon so Annie matched the Kona solid to it (I think it's 'cyan') but then I couldn't resist buying other colours.  I decided to use the orange for this (I used 1m in total because I decided two ribbons would be best for such a large book) and save the others for another time because there are more stitching books in my future, off that I'm sure!   You can see how it looks rolled up here.

3.  See how far I can get with a double bed-sized blue and white nine patch and snowball quilt.  

Well, it's nowhere near finished but I've gone from not having all the blocks made to this:

1. Section B and the first two rows of section E, 2. Section C, 3. Two sections joined (A and D)

It may not look like much progress to the rest of you but just joining a section of ten blocks (like the middle photo) is all the machine piecing I can do on a good day so turning 255 blocks into a quilt top is always going to be a long-term project for me - definitely not something I can manage in a mere three months!  So it's a FAIL but I'm not disheartened, I just need to keep plodding - something I'm quite good at!


Thank you to Rhonda for setting up the Finish-A-Long, Leanne for running it this year (I think it's a lot of work!) and all the sponsors for this quarter.  There are some fabulous finishes this quarter, why not take a minute to visit a couple of them?


I still haven't decided which photo of Archie to have turned into 'wall art' - if you haven't voted please do, I need all the help I can get!


I'll leave you with a photo of the man dog himself watching the neighbours:

If I told you I loved you would that earn me another treat?

Please excuse the state of the garden - it's getting 'done' sometime this year so all I'm doing is chopping stuff down when the mood takes me and cutting the grass!

My neighbours are lovely: if Archie is in the back garden when they start a BBQ they cook a piece of chicken for him.  If he misses the start of the cooking but appears in time for the eating then they save some chicken from their meal and give him it.  If, like Friday, he misses tea altogether they give him a dog treat!  No wonder he loves them!