I must focus!

I never seem to manage to focus on one thing at a time. My Verna blocks are still in a pile waiting to be sewn together, my Rural Jardin bear paws are draped over the kitchen table in mid quilt, I have a ton of coursework I should be doing but I'm still starting new projects!

I was so pleased with how my bear paws were turning out that I started slicing up my solid jelly roll to make the second version.

This version will have solid paws on a patterned background. The piles of neutral solids kind of look like tasty layered pastries - yummy! I also cut 240 of the 400 squares needed to go with them but got rotary fatigue at that point.

When I was rooting around in the box for the solid jelly roll I found my It's a Hoot jelly roll (I think I may have a jelly addiction). I'd completely forgotten about that and it's discovery led to a couple of hours of fun messing around on the computer.

This quilt is going to be a lot busier than my normal quilts but I'm trying to get out of my comfort zone. It took me a while to get here because this range has some large prints which you can't really see in a jelly roll. I may try and get one of them for the back so I can showcase the fabrics properly.

Now if I can focus and get some real work done I will have had a very productive day.

Snow day! (or possibly week)

It's snowed heavily here for 4 days so far which means that I can't work on my research project. In hindsight doing a project on soil treatment over the winter in the North of England may not have been the best plan.

It's left me with a lot of time on my hands which has been spent on my laptop in the college bar. I check the Daily Deal on the Missouri Star Quilt Company's site regularly and the other day they had an offer I couldn't turn down:

It's a Jelly roll of It's a Hoot fabrics by MoMo for Moda. The colours are so fun, they really cheered up my grey miserable snow day so I had a play around with my coloured pencils...

...and ordered it, along with a solid white jelly roll. I think it will make a really great quilt! My coloured scribbles attracted a bit of attention in the bar (the American Football players were particularly nosy) and when I explained what I was doing they all wanted a go. This was Ryan's design

Apparently the red block at the bottom has to have pictures of all of us. Not sure he's quite got the hang of quilt design.