Summersville Sunday: Blocks 25 - 28

After last week's experiment with a mosaic of the four Summersville blocks, I'm combining that with my old approach as the mosaic couldn't be viewed any larger for examination of the embroidery in any detail.

As I've said before, I started this project in 2012 as a 'sitting on the settee and watching telly with no prep required' project and slowly but surely embroidered all 49 blocks (which will be pieced into a quilt), but fell behind (mild understatement!) in blogging about them so I'm catching up with a weekly post.

You can find the other posts in the series here: blocks 1 - 4; blocks 5 - 8; blocks 9 - 12; blocks 13 - 16; blocks 17 - 20; blocks 21- 24.

The squares currently measure 7" square, but will be trimmed to 6.5" square before they're pieced into the quilt top.  I did this so that any ragged edges/fraying could be removed, rather than being in the seam allowance.  Once again, all the blocks this week have been embroidered with back stitch as, quite often, the fancier stitches don't really work on such a small scale and look out of place.

Block 25 has all the triangular roofs embroidered in ice cream colours, using two strands for the outline and one strand for the lines on the roof.  I used eight colours/shades and used a different combination on each roof. 

Block 26 has all of one row embroidered (the houses at either end will be in the seam allowance), using six colours for the houses, each of which has been used once in each position.  I used six colours/shades for the trees and combined one strand each of two colours so they blend together.

Block 27 contains just four colours, but each house is different from the others.

Block 28 has two rainbow streets - one 'forwards' rainbow and one 'backwards' rainbow.  It was definitely easier to embroider these 'lots of small houses' blocks when I had a rule to apply - I think it helps to pull the block together, rather than just being a random collection of colours/houses/styles.

And here's this week's blocks all together:

You may wonder how I ever get anything done when I could be gazing at Archie and his ever-moving ears, but quite a lot of the time this is all I can see of him:

Yes, there really is a dog under there!

I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with L.

In an attempt to stop Archie's hair covering the car from one end to the other, I have a big fluffy blanket (essentially two blankets back to back) covering the inside of the boot and up and over the back of the back seats (it's also handy for stopping things sliding from one side to the other when you go round a roundabout!).  Every now and again (more so in the winter, when he's in and out of there with feet clagged with mud), it needs washing.  A couple of weeks ago, I brought it in and when it was finally dry enough to go back in the car I put it by the front door for the next time I was going out...and Archie claimed it as yet another bed!  This is his third in the (small) front room alone!  (#spoiltrotten)  I've let him keep it for the time being as there's another one like it in the car (it was Alfie's) but he shouldn't get too comfortable..!

As you can imagine, when he's curled up in the blanket (and he does all the covering himself, I just watch and try not to put him off by laughing) and the heating is on, he doesn't really like to move if at all possible.  So when I made a noise while taking the washing off the radiator, this is the glare I received:

Can I help you?

And then a couple of days later, I caught this cute pose:

I can hear a biscuit calling my name.  Did you bring it?

*sigh* I don't think that biscuit's coming after all...

Okay, I'll be honest, I do spend an awful lot of my time watching Archie!

Thanks for popping in!