Blocks and more blocks

I'm so pleased I took my blocks outside into the sun yesterday morning for some photographing. The day gradually got worse and we ended up getting some serious rain.

First up are my 36-patch blocks which seriously took over! I honestly forgot they were supposed to be my leader-ender project - I had so much fun sorting through my scraps for the 2" squares. I found these were also a good non-thinking way to sew when I just had small snatches of time.

The thing about Leader-Ender projects is that they are supposed to sit quietly in the background while a MAIN project gets worked on. That, obviously, is not always the case!

Anyway, these blocks are for Jessica Dayon's Smidgeon quilt. I'm making mine a little wider than hers as I didn't want to stop making the blocks (!), but also I thought that making it bigger would suit us better.

The next step is to decide what colour I want to use to surround these blocks, and also another fabric for the outer borders. These larger amounts of colour will help tie the whole quilt together.

Although I was battling with a slight breeze, I also managed to photograph my Popstar blocks. I have had these finished for a while but it's taken me a while to get them to the photography stage and onto my blog!

I made in a sewalong with a few friends. I got a little behind .... 

These fabrics are really pretty but incredibly hard to photograph. In real life the colours are brighter and the contrast between the green/blue and the grey star-shadow is a lot better.

The pattern is Popstar by The Fat Quarter Shop.

In other news, I haven't yet bragged about the hill-a-day challenge I set myself in May. It felt like I started walking, and just kept on going. We live in a hilly area so there is no shortage of hills on our farm to tackle. Once you get up the first one, it's easy to keep on walking and do the next as well! In all I walked a total of 117kms during May..... my goal was to do 100 so I well surpassed that!

There's a wee peak just off the farm track that I like to climb for a bit of extra height. This was the view from it one morning —

(You can just make out the clay track along the ridge.)

June hasn't been as nearly as productive walking-wise. I had two busy weekends and a slightly sore ankle which needed resting. We've also had more rain this month which makes the clay tracks either sludgy or greasy. Neither make ideal walking conditions so I time my walks for when we've had some sunshine to dry things out a little.

Yesterday morning though, while it was still fine, I managed another walk. I went the opposite direction to the above walk and passed the cows on the way —

As it's winter and the cows are not milking they are on winter rations. They'd not long had a fresh break of grass so totally ignored me as I went by.

I went  up a wee way into the bush, but not very far - I wanted to get back home to photograph my blocks!!
The house and buildings are about centre of the photo below, so as you can see, pretty much everywhere, if you want to go some distance, involves a hill!

Last weekend Miss Lily had a sleepover here, all by herself. When you're a twin, that's a pretty exciting event! She had several requests for her sleepover. One was that she help Ganma make Blueberry pie and the other was that she do some more sewing for her dolls.

We use a lot of blueberries - muffins, smoothies, snacking, etc but a Blueberry pie isn't something that's usually on any of our menus so it took a bit of thinking to make a nice and easy AND gluten free version. But we succeeded and she really enjoyed it!!

The sewing bit was to make (more) quilts for her Barbies. She has a couple of the little 'child' barbies so a small quilt was all that was needed. We made one that day and yesterday when her and her dad called in for a cuppa, she decided she needed to finish the second one. 

I didn't get a photo of the first - a blue one identical to this! Once again, the quickest quilt I have ever made. Sew through all the layers and then zigzag the edge 😁

'til next time,

happy stitches,