Work on Wed 18th Jan

Hi Everyone,
Most of you that read my blog are as excited as I am about the release of Esther's new free BOM Diamond Hill, What a beautiful pattern Esther has shared with us and I just can't resist it.
Not that I need a new project as my plan was to finish ALL my UFO's before starting anything new.
I don't have many so it should have been easy as these are my to do's

Complete the quilt top at least.

Finish quilting Fly Away

I have made progress in the last week and quilted most of my star backgrounds.

Finish quilting Hearts Desire

have three of these borders and the blocks still to do.

Quilt my Bamboo wall hanging.

It only needs the background to be quilted as borders are on and I have stitched around the applique.

Have you noticed what the last three have in common, yes all done apart from the quilting which is why I started the oriental quilt, to have a break from quilting

So which have I worked on the last couple of days?  You are right if you answered, none of the above.

It was love at first sight with Esther's dark colourway and knew I just had to make it.

For the first time I had issues with printing the pattern, I have heard that Windows 10 (which we now have) can have it's own mind when it comes to printing and override settings, don't know if this is true but have never had an issue before. Anyway, what helped me was a blog I read a few months ago on how to resize any block pattern with easy maths to what you want, bigger or smaller.

It is very simple really, start with what you want and divide it by what you got.

I taped my pages that were all a fraction small together and measured, 17-5 inches and it should have been 18 inches. It wasn't really a problem for the applique but the vase had to line up perfectly and at that size it wasn't going to.

Simple division on the calculator, want 18 divided by got 17.5 equals 1.03

Move decimal point two places and my answer was to print at 103% result was perfect 

For full details of this easy method for resizing any block this is the link.

http://blog.shopmartingale.com/quilting-sewing/quilt-math-how-to-reduce-and-enlarge-quilt-blocks/

Yesterday I went shopping for my fabric and came home with a slight change of plan.

Knew I didn't want a a solid dark colour and fell for this charcoal fabric straight away, has a bluish tinge and of course my favourite a touch of mettalic. Only problem was a large one, 3.25 metres was not enough for a completely dark background so had two choices, pick another fabric or put light borders around the blocks. this fabric won and my blocks are cut.

Loved the vibrant look of Esther's little squares and found something that should give a similar effect but in a very different colouway.

This left me with what to use for my light borders, couldn't go to a straight cream because the teal above is alot stonger than in the photo.

Stonehenge to the rescue, lovely mottle in teal with peach/ yellow

I think it will work and have had an extra little play

Now I'm not so sure.

Plenty of time to decide while I am working on the applique.

Linking now to Esther, have a great week everyone.

Cheers Jenny