Colour Pop

I had happy mail today. My subscription copy of Love Patchwork & Quilting issue 33 arrived and this month there is a little project by yours truly in it.

 I had the great pleasure of working with Lecien's new 1000 colours solids range. The colours are beautifully saturated and really pop against a white background. Here's the professional shot from inside the magazine.

It's a simple tumbling blocks design  but the placement of colours makes it look a bit more complicated.I used a variegated Aurifil thread to straight line quilt a star design over the pieced section of the wall hanging to add a bit of texture. This is what it looks like from the back of the wall hanging.

I do love seeing a project in print :) Catch you soon x

Promises - Mystery BOM Month 3

I'm a day late posting this month's mystery block so please accept my apologies if you were waiting with baited breath. 

This month we are English Paper piecing a block that I'm calling Promises.

 I've prepared templates in two sizes this month: 6" and 12" so you have options for different projects. As usual there is a secondary pattern when multiple blocks are pieced together.

Some of the piecing is a bit fiddly but I hope you'll think it's worth a try. I recommend starting with the pieced kites. The templates are the finished size so you need to add your seam allowances to the fabric when cutting them out.

 This is how I pieced the rest of the block.

One quarter done then repeat the process to add the remaining sections. Please excuse the bumpy circle in the middle of the finished block, I haven't removed the papers yet. You'll find the information sheet, colouring sheet and templates on the website.

I was thrilled to find Wendy's Rolling in the clover block in our Flickr group again this month! It's nice to know I'm not sewing alone :) 

If you decide to join in I'd love to see your versions and it would be great to be able to share some more of your work here along with our Flickr group and of course on Instagram #nelliesnicetiesmysterybom. Tell your friends, the more the merrier :) Catch you soon x

Rolling in clover

A new month starts today so that can mean only one thing, it's new Mystery BOM block time!

We're "Rolling in Clover" this month. This 6" English Paper Pieced design is a little tricky to piece in parts but well worth trying out.

As with most of my designs it tessellates to produce a secondary pattern.

You'll find the information sheet and templates on our website. I'm giving a little bit of guidance this month as it is a little tricky. You'll be printing the block off as whole then cutting your paper pieces from it this month.

As usual I glue basted all of my pieces.

By far the trickiest piece is the green one! For the best results when basting I clipped into the corners leaving only a few threads of fabric to catch when sewing.

When joining the shapes I started with the trickiest piece. (I use Aurifil thread to stitch as I find it doesn't tangle or snap!) I stitched from the tip of the triangle, right sides together with it's corresponding blue shape and continued in the order as shown below. 

I followed the same process to attach another of the green pieces to the opposite side of the blue shape as shown below.

Next step is to sew the second blue piece to the other side of the tricky green piece as shown below. Starting at the base of the blue shapes and working continuously around the green piece in the same manner as before.

Repeat these steps for the bottom half of the block, then join the two halves together. I started stitching from the centre of the block outwards to make sure that my centre points matched. Finally add the orange pieces to the corners of the block. I stitched the long edges together first then worked up both short sides from the base.

Leave the papers in while pressing if you intend to add further blocks, otherwise remove the papers and press well to remove any little lumps from the green bits. This block took me around an hour and half from start to finish in between cooking and watching the rugby.

I was delighted to see two Star Central projects added to our Flickr group for the first month! This first one is by Diane. I love that it's been turned into a project already!

Diane's photo from Flickr.

 The second one is by Wendy. Lots of yummy favourite fabrics in these!

Wendy's photo from Flickr.

If you decide to join in I'd love to see your versions and it would be great to be able to share some more of your work here along with our Flickr group and of course on Instagram #nelliesnicetiesmysterybom. Tell your friends, the more the merrier :) Catch you soon x

Commitment issues

I have no less than 5 projects on the go at the moment. I don't know why I'm being so fickle, maybe I'm just in a rush to try all the ideas that entered my head while I was out of action :) I've recently joined Instagram so apologies to those of you that follow me there as a lot of what I'm going to show now has been aired over there in the last week or so. [Yvonne's on there too but she might be a bit quiet as they've just moved house and have no broadband]
There's been quite a bit of progress on my kites, diamonds and stars EPP project. I've decided it will be a cushion so I've only got one more set of shapes to piece :)

The lovely ladies of the HipBees have been dutifully returning their October blocks to me (I showed you 2 here) and I've been whipping them up into finished blocks as soon as they pop through the door. So much for taking my time over this one ;) It's shaping up to be another contender for my all-time favourite quilt. You can see the individual blocks here. I'll do a nice post showing the individual blocks when I do the final reveal...whenever that might be.

There has been a trial run of Christmas tree decorations using crazy scrappy patchwork. This is definitely a work in progress as I can't decide what I want the finished hearts to look like. I've got another one ready to put together which I'm going to trim with mini-pompoms.

Today I've been having much fun with some gorgeous Laurie Wisbrun prints and bright solids but I can't show you much detail of this project yet. Here's a sneaky peek for now :)

Finally, I've been crocheting in the evenings whilst watching tv so there is wool all over the place in our living room :) I've only got dodgy phone camera pictures of progress with this project so I'll have to get some better pics of that before I share it here. I'll leave you with photos of the most awesome birthday cake in the whole world ever!

 My gorgeous and talented sister-in-law made this for my 38th birthday, complete with replica Sneaky Stars quilt!

I should have taken a pic of the inside because it had multicoloured layers. Jade has some seriously excellent cake making skills! Even more amazingly, this cake was wheat and gluten-free. I'm almost looking forward to next year's birthday for another cake ;)  Catch you soon x