Mini Archie's April Furtle Around The Blogosphere

Hello! Hasn't April been an odd month?  It's been both fast and slow to pass and the days seem to have been simultaneously (and confusingly) long and short.

This month I have finished a pair of socks in this gorgeous Oxidise colourway from Fine Fish Yarns:

And I've made good progress on my Summersville quilt.  This month I've ironed both of the remaining fabrics (which have been languishing in the ironing basket for, well, let's just say quite a while and leave it at that (the LV block from last month even accompanied them on the trip to the iron!)) and I've cut the first lot of 3/4" strips for the 'window frames' for the embroidered blocks and I've got them ready to sew:

There was a wee bit of a panic after I realised that I didn't like my planned 1/2" finished window frames.  I discovered this before I cut the dark grey strips, but after I'd trimmed the three 'two-part* blocks' to the sizes needed to have a 1/2" strip across the middle of them. *sigh*  After a bit of thinking (and rather a lot of self recrimination), I decided to sit down and work out how big I would have trimmed them if I'd been planning on 1/4" strips and discovered that there was only a 1/8" difference between that height and the height I did trim them. So I've split that 1/8" between the top and bottom of the pieces and have offset the fabric by 1/16" from the edge of the strip. Given that the blocks are all interfaced (to give me something to fasten the embroidery threads into, to help stop any ends shadowing through, and to give the fabric some stability to cope with the embroidery), I decided that a 3/16" seam allowance would be absolutely fine. And it's not as though I have another option other than make these blocks again and I'm not doing that! You can just see how the cream fabric is set back from the grey fabric:

*When I cut out the Summersville fabric for this quilt, I didn't cut all 50 as I left three to the end so I could see if there were any buildings I hadn't embroidered which I wanted to include.  When it came to cutting the remaining pieces, I discovered that the 'Town' fabric I had left was a different dye lot and the background was a noticeably different colour. I decided that instead of using it, I would take pieces from the original length, use two pieces in each block and make them into a window with a bar across rather than a picture window. It just goes to show that you should never get rid of any of the fabric from a project until you have made all the blocks you need! (And even then, you should make sure you won't want it for binding or adding to the back or for the label!)

And that's it for this month!

Mini Archie is continuing to boost the morale of the nation with his hiding games:

I is just having a Furtle round the garden...

Linking up to the April Furtle 

If you're linking up, please add a link (one per person, please) to your blog post, which could contain: a mosaic of all you've made in the month, something you've made/started/worked on, a goal which you'd like to achieve in the next month (and then in next month's post you can reflect on that goal and set yourself another one - I find this particularly handy if I'm in the midst of a big project and finding the making of hundreds of blocks to be interminable), anything crafty you'd like to share. This isn't just for sewing or quilting, but is for all crafts so if you knit, make lace, make clothes, do anything which could come under the heading of 'craft', then please link up. Please visit the link immediately before and after you and leave an encouraging comment, and more if you can manage it - we all know that comments create joy, so let's spread some around. Also, please treat all the linked posts and their authors with respect - I want this to be an inclusive space for all crafters and crafts and all are welcome. If you're not sure if you're welcome or you belong, you do - this is by no means a closed space and if you want to join, then you are most welcome. If you need help linking up, please leave a comment and I will do my best to help. Please add the Furtling button to your blog post: copy the code below and paste it into your blog post - it should then magically appear when you publish your blog post (I'll do my best to help if you have any problems) and it will help people find the Furtling page with all the details of the link up.

<p style="text-align:center"><a href="https://archiethewonderdog.blogspot.com/p/furtling.html"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTXDD7-BYr5nXJtGn7HIFUcDUZfLGBTpazWKP8TCUWdkA6zd2285lbJX4aoMug6QyKDdxtxA-njWnhvf0GugU-An4z5lTFcqmYnae0Gb68FR0ZmydWYETGSa2oF1NeQDMVNwZBnUHTpsD7/s200/textgram_1548790799.png" alt="Archie The Wonder Dog" /></a></p>

To link up, go to the link at the bottom of this page and click on 'link up' (it's a blue button) and then add your link (website URL), a title (this could be your blog name but could also be something interesting to draw people to it (keep it clean!) if you prefer), and your email. This last one doesn't appear on the link (I will have access to it - I won't use it unless there's a problem and I need to contact you) so don't worry that you're about to share your email address with the world (or the handful of people who find this link), you're not! The link will remain open until 16th May; if you're seeing this post after this date, I'm afraid you can't link up to the April Furtle, but you can link next month if you like.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter