Over the last few days, I've really managed to get into the zone, and I've spent some quality time with my machine, which is always a great feeling! Oh, and I can also finally show my latest finished project, now that it has been gifted - ta da, a pair of busy bee cushions.

Can you get any sweeter than these busy bees! 



Despite being much smaller than a quilt, these 2 did take quite a while, as they are all hand pieced, but I love the end result :-)  (and thankfully so did the recipient)

My next project is well under way, and it's those scrappy quilt blocks I was cutting out with the iron on template paper. It got a little confusing making sure each stack had a good mix of colours and trying to avoid repeat patterns as I went along, so I ended up spreading them out everywhere and stacking them in piles first, which was much easier.

Once that bit was out of the way, it was just a case of sewing all 5 bits back together again, 42 times.

42 scrappy blocks ready for trimming 

The blocks don't go back together again in an exact square after they've been chopped up, so they need squaring up at the end, in this case to 8.5 inches each, and then they will all fit together perfectly. Here's a sneak peek of what it will look like when I get them all together.

Loving the colour palette and the scrappy look. 

I'm hoping to get the top finished this week, but I am determined to finish up another project which has been hanging around first. This diamond quilt (below) actually took me ages to make, despite it's simple look, as it involved lots of precise cutting, tricky seam matching and everything was cut on the bias so it stretched and messed me around a lot! It is not my best quilt ever, and there are some non matching points that will forever annoy me, but I do love it, and I've finally got on with quilting it. I've gone for straight line quilting, which is a first for me, and it was the first time I've ever used a walking foot - yes really! I always use my free motion foot, and I love the freedom of doodling all over the quilt, but this one needed straight lines. I've done all the lines going one direction, so half way there, and you can see that it will be a sort of argyle pattern, which suits the diamonds perfectly. When I say 'straight lines' I do mean that loosely, as it's neither perfect or dead straight. I opted for eyeballing it rather than marking it out first, but you know, straight-ish is just fine by me, and it was way less stressful just freely running down the lines :-) Hopefully the next time I update the blog, it will be completely finished...

My straight-ish argyle quilt, half way there.(and in need of a good iron after waiting so long to be quilted!)