Welcome to Saturday Quilting Bring & Share 🙂 The 300th edition 🥳 Wow! I feel like I should have some sort of celebration going on but here we are, it’s just another Saturday 🙂 Mind you, any time chatting with friends about quilting with has got to be good, right? So lets bring along our project(s) and share in the inspiration, tips and news circulating through our Worldwide Quilting Community.

I finished the Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt – there’s a post about it here 🙂 Of course there were plenty of WIPs I could have picked up following that finish but No! I just had to go rummaging through my stash and start something new 😀 Several years a go a friend very generously passed on a beautiful selection of Moda fabrics. Mainly from the Rouenneries Deux collection there was a Jelly Roll and a metre each of six fabrics. I fiddled around on EQ7 for a while trying to get the most from the fabrics. I settled for a Nine Patch design set on point.

I’ve made a few changes to my fabric choices along the way, using the red and grey Jelly Roll strips for the Nine Patch blocks rather than the cream in the EQ7 design as I found the cream fabrics disappeared into the plain blocks. I’m undecided about the exact width and number of borders – it is a real luxury having so many fabrics to play with!

And then there were the calculations to be made before cutting out the setting triangles and corner triangles. Maths is not my favourite and the calculations for these blocks is – to me – mind boggling. Anyho! Google to the rescue: I found this: an explanation of the maths and, more importantly, a table of cutting sizes. Whew! Thank you Janet Wickell at The Spruce Crafts 👍 Even with the calculations done for me I still did my customary test using paper. I figure I’d rather waste a sheet of paper than mis-cut fabric!

Test successfully completed I set about cutting out the triangles and piecing the Nine Patch blocks (finished size 6″). I made steady progress through the week, as can be seen from this photo of the project up on my design wall 🙂

This morning I did a bit of improv sewing, converting an old bed sheet into a cover for a car. Sewing Bee standard it is not! 😂

But hey! It’ll do! Well! I hope it will be acceptable to my parents who requested an absorbent fabric cover to lie between the top of their car and the new waterproof, frost protector cover they’ve just bought. We have the same model car as my parents so I could use ours as a perfect mannequin. Thankfully weather conditions were just right, calm and dry, for me to be popping in and out to the car from my sewing room. We shall see if the ‘under-cover’ meets the standard required…

Away from the sewing room I’ve been enjoying taking up knitting again after a break of many years. The Aran weight yarn is easy to use and grows nice and quick. Since making the knitting bag (works perfectly for the large balls of yarn I’m using) I’ve completed the back, left front and very nearly completed the right front of the cardigan. I’d like to think I could have it finished before Christmas but I don’t want to put myself under any pressure as I’m finding it so relaxing being able to pick up this project and put it down as suits.

Just before I share the web links I have to explain that I’m continuing to play catch-up with the email notifications that land in my inbox, so some of these links will take you back a month and others are fresh this week! It’s also dawned on me that I’m no longer receiving notifications from several of the blogs I like to follow – frustrating. I’m trying to re-establish links with those as well as keeping on the look out for others to follow. Please do use the comments box at the bottom of this page to tell us about the quilt related bloggers you enjoy following. Thank you!

Here are the links into our Worldwide Quilting Community:

So here’s one of those links taking us back to mid-October when Carole revealed the Autumn Jubilee QAL quilt. The post includes a detailed tutorial and lots of ways to layout the blocks to make finished items of varying sizes.

Ooo! I just pressed the pay button and joined Yvonne Fuchs’ Diatom Quilt Along! I’m committed now! Take a look at the two variations of quilt design (each with two sizes) that Yvonne will be sharing between December 2022 and July 2023. Such interesting blocks. There’s sure to be lots to learn both for confident beginners and much more experienced patchwork quilters. Here’s the blog post with all the sign up details – to take advantage of the $18 sale price sign up by 30th November.

Gretchen is putting her own take on the Scrap Vortex quilt process shared by Amanda Jean back in 2015! I always have a Scrap Vortex quilt on the go, there’s a bucket of scraps next to my machine and I have a drawer filling up with Vortex blocks.

I wonder how the findings of the annual survey of quilters by Premier Needle Arts resonates with you? Abby has written a brief summary of the findings and predicted trends. I must say it does chime with much of what I observe from working in a fabric shop and running classes. Although I think there is a lot of interest in modern quilting designs and techniques here in the UK. Perhaps more so than in North America? 🤔 Or maybe my observations are skewed by working in shop that stocks lots of bright modern prints?

It can be really helpful to have a fresh pair of eyes look over a work in progress. That’s one of the delights of sewing days with friends – whether it be a block in the wrong orientation or a fabric that doesn’t sit right there is help at hand along with useful suggestions for alternative layouts/fabrics. Rachel was grateful her Mother cast an eye and gave her opinion of a work in progress up on Rachel’s design wall.

Here’s a pair of very clear tutorials by Brittany, both can be found on her blog site, ‘Lo & Behold Stitchery’: How to Trim Diamond in a Square Units; and How to Trim Half-Rectangle Triangles.

Linking with Alycia for Finished or Not Friday – and Alycia does have a finished quilt to share along with a colourful gallery of linked projects.

Happy Stitching!

Allison