Sewalongs progress

It's one of those glorious days when you can fling all the doors and windows open and let the sunshine and warmth filter through the house.

Lovely peaceful view from the deck today :-)

A nice day to have a quick sit out on the deck with a coffee after spending the morning moving calves around - older ones to paddocks, not-so-old ones to another barn, leaving plenty of room in the main calf shed for the youngest ones.
A nice day to take a photo of my completed top for Pam Buda of Heartspun Quilt's Market Day mystery. This was a fun sewalong, easy blocks each month- and look how they came together! Wonderful!

As you can see, I chose to mine in Christmas colours, inspired by the fabrics left over from the beautiful quilt sample Leeanne made as a BOM for The Country Yard. She chose such yummy fabrics for it that I really wanted a piece of the action :-)
You may remember that Pam offfered two sizes for this mystery sewalong; naturally I succumbed and sewed up the small sized blocks as well. They are all made but not completely joined up yet, this is how they are looking so far.

The size of these blocks is 2". Too cute.

I find the small blocks a fun little challenge and they aren't really as scary as they seem. Janet O, rogue quilter, recently did an interesting post about mini quilts where she included some tips on sewing up small blocks -- *here*
The Market Day mystery sewalong instructions are still on Pam's blog if you want to make one yourself; around September 15th she is doing a Show and Tell and I am looking forward to seeing the versions that everyone has made.

From time to time over the last few months I have alluded to a project I had shamefully started when I didn't really need a new one :-) I had figured that if I didn't mention it on my blog it didn't really count as yet another project. However I have kidded myself too long, so now I will share! Soupcon is the name of the project; a sewalong by the talented Karen of Faeries and Fibres......I began mine well after it had started and have had quite a few little breaks along the way but I am loving it so far!

The intriguing point of this one was how it began - we fussy cut a fabric and English Paper Pieced either a star or flower —

Part one and two of Soupcon.

My resulting block in no way resembled my original fabric and it threw me for a while, trying to work out what to use next! Totally different to the fabrics I had originally chosen for this project.

I"ve never fussy cut like this before and loved the effect.
Now I know why lots of people are getting hooked on Patchwork of the Crosses!

Below is my Soupcon at the moment. Partway through part Four.

It's fun how this project changes so much with each round. The flickr group for the sewalong is *here*

And that's about it for today. It may be time to get out into that sunshine again (at the washing line!).
Thank you for visiting,
Happy creating!