Soul Searching - Yellow

Seven blocks down...two to go...brown and purple...it doesn't surprise me that the brown block is among the last to be done!

The yellow block was fun to do...I do love yellow...it's such a happy sunny colour...

Funnily enough, I don't have a lot of this colour in my stash...probably because I keep on using it...might have to "restash" :)

And seeing I know what the final layout will be I just had to sew together a row....it looks pretty good...I could start a new thing in outdoor patchwork banners! Except I wouldn't recommend hanging them off party lights!

Off to make the mess with brown and purple fabrics now!

Soul Searching - Blues

What a mess I made making these blocks....but fun working with blues! The paler blues are mainly scraps...

Quite pretty...but a bit on the light side!

These darker blues have a bit more drama about them....

This block had me pulling lots of fabrics from the stash...I was surprised how many darker blues I had...helped out by Kaffe Fassett and Keiko Goke fabrics!

In my earlier posts on the Making Quilts - the promise of joy by Kathy Doughty I neglected to say where the book could be found...the book is available at Quilt Mania and at Material Obsession....happy sewing :)

Soul Searching - Pink and Orange

Here we go, as promised from the post last week...I have been playing with my pink and orange scraps this week, and making good progress with these blocks.....I am really getting the hang of this project now.

The deep pink of this block is probably a really good reflection of the quilts I make, and how I love this strong shade of pink....I had no problem in finding scraps to make up this block.

The  important thing to note about this photo is my fantastic new turf that has been down for nearly 8 weeks and is looking lovely and luscious!

Some of these pinks are so hot they are almost red!

Turning down the volume slightly to my orange block, the sun had started to go down when I took these shots, so the colours aren't sparkling like the pink block...but you get the idea....

Using the variety of lights has been a very interesting exercise...I had very few light scraps...don't know why that is...so I pulled all the lights from the stash, and have been cutting and cutting...

The orange block is quite fun, I didn't have that many orange scraps either so had to raid the stash cupboard again....made a monster mess!

Have put what's left of the light and orange fabrics back in the cupboard..so now off to play with my blue scraps and make a brand new mess :)

Not another new project!

Yep! Just as the UFO pile has just started to whisper "Finish me" instead of shouting "FINISH ME" I had the dreaded inspiration wave come over me, and before you could say "two and half inch strip" fabric had exploded out my scrap box, and stash cupboard, and away we went again....riding the wave...it all started with this book...

Making Quilts....the promise of joy by Kathy Doughty of Material Obsession....I have been waiting awhile for this to come out, and I love it....so many great ideas....21 patterns...so lots to drool over....and you really just want to start making a quilt straight away after reading it!

So that's what I did....and I started on Soul Searching....such a great pattern for an instant sewing fix....I got to tidy up my scraps and touch lots of my stash, and basically make a huge mess...but it made me happy :)

The idea with this pattern is to learn about contrast and tone, and not to focus so much on perfectly matching everything....so I really had to let go with the light strips and mix up the whites, creams and beiges....that was a bit of struggle for me....but overall the focus on tone has worked well :)

As an aside I thought I would share this other pattern Sunburst....

Beautiful use if Denyse Schmidt's Greenhill fabrics.....I may have the kit for this plus the templates!! Repeat after me....one thing at a time!

So all up....love this book....love that there is 21 patterns, something for everyone, the instructions are easy to follow, and as the book is printed by QuiltMania, the text is in French and English, but they have managed this in a clever way, by using the blue boxes for the english so you don't have to spend time trying to work out where the english bit on the page is...go buy it...you won't regret it!

Off to go and play with my pink scraps!