Just auditioning... no, really!!

Still resting my machine after oiling it (need to buy batting anyway), and so have been immersing myself in hand work. I am now working on two applique quilts, two stitchery quilts, and whatever else I want... hahahahha.. but really, right now I am keen to keep up with the four quilts (three of them are quilt-a-longs which really helps, and the other is for a 40th birthday present at the start of June.)

Definitely feeling motivated to keep up. There is only about 1 or 2 hours of hand sewing left on the first Diamond Hill applique block.... (keen to finish it, so that I can start on a different quilt) I do the fiddly applique in the evening when the children are in bed, so that I can really concentrate on it. Single colour stitchery can even be done when I am a passenger in the car (yes, busy Mummy's take any 10 minute chance they can), as they need less concentration than applique.

Today, continuing from last night, I was auditioning fabrics for the first block of Esther's Secret Garden.

It's not really enough to kind of hold the fabrics next to the background. I decided to cut some strips for the woven basket to see if I liked them... which led to making a couple of strips with the fusible bias maker.. which led to this!!!



This was the original fat quarter.

 Such pretty fabric.

An important rookie mistake for the first time bias strip weaver... keep your strips longer than you need them! By the time you weave them up and down you need a slightly longer piece than the one you already cut. D'oh!

I needed to use pins to hold the bias strips in place, then after a happy positioning, they can be ironed.

Finally, in order to really audition the strips, the basket was placed onto the background fabric... which required me to sticky tape the 8 A4 sheets together to make the pattern placement, then trace with green Artline fineliner onto the background fabric.

But, because I haven't finished the first block of Diamond Hill, I haven't actually started it. *wink wink*

 Hahahaha..

Thank goodness I didn't use one of those new Pilot Frixion pens. With all the ironing I did getting the basket weaving on, all the tracing would have been ironed away.

Right! Next I need to trace the 3 Goblin King stitcheries that need to be caught up on! Eek!