My Claytons SAHRR 2025

Here in New Zealand (and Australia too, I think) there used to be an advert for a drink called Claytons with the byline, the drink you have when you're not having a drink. The word Claytons rapidly became part of every day language to mean something you're doing when you're not really doing it.....or similar renditions. 

I feel like some of my projects are Claytons projects.....I'm doing a quiltalong but at my own rate, or a challenge but I don't join up with the link parties, or make my own rules for a sewalong. I pretend I'm taking part,  but aren't really!

The other instance is that I start a new project,  but it isn't really a new project because it uses scraps, stash, or orphan blocks.

(OH the things we tell ourselves!)

I've realised that I love the inspiration,  I love to be making something......hmmmm starting something new is always nice.....I love visiting blogs and seeing how different people are interpreting the theme, but I feel bad when I don't join in physically,  comment, link up, or have breaks to the routine......this has happened a lot over the last couple of years and so I've developed this thing of sitting on the sideline, participating but not quite participating in a Claytons sort of way.

Which brings me to last year's SAHRR (January 2025). The annual Stay At Home Round Robin, hosted by Gail at quiltinggail. You stay at home and your work stays at home; as opposed to many Round Robins where the quilt (often) travels from maker to maker for each new round.

Gail and her team post regular prompts for each round. 

So in my Claytons way, I joined in.

I started with an orphan block. You may remember that in the past, I test sewed patterns for Juliet of Tartankiwi designs. This block is part of her Singing In The Rain  collection and I sewed it back in July 2023. I always wanted to come back and sew all the Dancing in the Rain girls and the cloud, but never did.

I decided that this was an ideal time to use it.

The first round's instruction was to make a King's Crown block OR a block that begins with our initial. 

To be honest I can't remember the exact logic behind my choice, and my notes are back home where I'm not right now.....I will come back and update the details at some stage.....I'm sure it was something to do with Royal (my initial) which I thought quite cleverly tied in with the King's Crown idea too. And I think I elongated it to form the frame -

Round Two asked for Half Square Triangles which was nice and straightforward-

The third prompt was Stars. I felt it was the perfect time to bring some of the red liberty fabrics back in. And a pop of colour with the gold.

You can see that I've also decided to do chains heading out to the corners. 

The next instruction was to make a split block. Basically slice a square of fabric, add in a strip of fabric and sew it back together again. I had some ideas for this round but my work hung untouched on the wall for quite some time.

Fast forward to this year and my Claytons participation of the Chookshed Challenge AND a monthly challenge with the Thursday sewing ladies at my work. 

While I was busy sewing my Show and Tell blocks, I leader-ended my simple rectangle split blocks.  

Whoops I forgot to take a photo of the individual blocks but you can sort of see them here-

The narrow gold strip finishes at half an inch.

And joined to the centre-

The photo doesn't show the fabric variation in the border very well and you could say that it would have been a lot simpler to use one long strip of light blue, one of gold and one of the dark blue......but where is the scrappiness fun in that?

I feel like I will probably be tempted to come back and swap out the latest cornerstones for a triple patch,  rather than a 4-patch, but I'll see what happens when the time comes.

Even though this latest round frames the quilt quite nicely,  there are two more rounds to plan. I'd like some more red and gold. 

So this is where I'm at with last year's Stay At Home Round Robin. One day there could even be an update!

Sorry I got a little wordy,

'til next time, 

Happy stitches,

Raewyn