WIP Wednesday

All the little half-square triangles have been matched up with their central squares to make 42 beautiful anvil blocks. 

I'm just debating how to put them together now. I spent a good hour laying them out on the living room floor last night and playing around with them. I originally planned to sash them and seeing them all together like this shows me that they're a little busy to be next to each other.

Due to the wonders of modern technology I've come up with a couple of layouts. The first is the above layout with 2" sashing between all the blocks. This was the original plan but I'm still not entirely happy. I think it's the lack of symmetry in the design. The second layout shows the same sashing but rotating every other block. For some reason this is a lot more pleasing to my eye so I think this is the one I'll go for. What do you think?

Other projects:

• Neutral jelly roll bear paws - Still waiting to be basted and quilted. 
• It's a hoot - Debating layout. Maybe I'll have to come up with something completely different
• Hex-a-long - Fabric ordered, can't wait to start
• Frosted window panes - Found the pattern, more to come!

Work In Progress Wednesday

My plan for doing a colour way every evening didn't work out. Once I'd started cutting and piecing I just couldn't stop. It seems to be ages since I cut fabric, I've been so busy quilting tops I had lying around. So on Monday evening I finished the red colour way (apart from trimming)

And then last night I sat down to do the next batch... First I thought, well I might as well cut them all out so that I can just piece a few every night:

Then when I started sewing and I kept telling myself just a few more, just a couple more, oooh I wonder what the checks look like:

So now they're all done and chopped up and I now have an epic pressing session ahead of me. Time to find something good on the TV to watch while I do it:

Strawberry Fields Forever

I have finally decided on a pattern for my Strawberry Fields quilt. It's another traditional block called Anvil. There seem to be a lot of different blocks going by this name here are a few that I've come across:

 

The block I'm going for is the first one. It requires lots of half square triangles so I guess I'm going to be an expert by the time I'm done. 10 triangles per block x 42 blocks = 420 half square triangles! I used some scraps to mock up a test block before I dared hack into my layer cake and I think it's turned out pretty well.

I've sliced into my layer cake and started with my triangles but I'm going to have to do a few at a time or I'll go insane. One of the nice things about working with Fig Tree Quilts lines is that they come in a number of different colour ways so I can do one colour per evening. Here go the reds!