A little bit behind

I've spent a lot of this week on the computer and not so much in the sewing room, so not a lot of physical achievement, but some planning.

I have managed to complete the 10th Civil War block.

 This week's block is called Lincoln's Platform, and was chosen to mark the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln being inaugurated as President of the United States.  As always you can read more of the story on Barbara's blog.

My fabric choices this week are mostly sourced from the stack of pre-washing and ironing that I did last week (when I *should* have made the block), with the pink spots and plain coming from a project I am working on as part of my March Challenge.
I had seen some of the other blocks completed and liked having the stripes to frame the centre block, also the example block that Barbara showed had a fussy cut flower in the centre to remember Mary Lincoln's silk dresses and I really liked this sentiment.  It became a challenge to find an appropriate flower and surrounding fabrics which worked with the stripe I had chosen (the only stripe in all the fabric I had washed).  In the end I went with the selection you see here.  A bit of a mish-mash, and the central flower is not one you would have seen in the 1860's, but still it's a flower.  Unfortunately the block has ended up at 8 1/4" instead of the 8 1/2" it's supposed to be, so will have to remember that when it comes time to put them all together.

Now I'm only one block behind again, because of course it's a new week and we're now up to the 12th block, so I'd better hurry up and do the 11th.


Also this week I caught up on the Retro Nine Patch block.  I finished block 2 the day before block 3 was released.

I had more success with the satin stitch on this one because I outlined first and then did the satin stitch.  My little purple flower looks a big wobbly, but I guess it will just match the wobbly-ness of block 1!  Block 3 is traced out and ready to go... but I've got a month to finish it so there is no rush just yet.




I found some time this week to get in a bit of free motion quilting practice so had a go at a meandering line/stippling type of thing.  Here are my results:

I'm pretty impressed!  I had to play around a bit with threads and bobbins to get a good combination, but more on that later.

Oh, and I've just finished the latest Birdie Stitches as well so I'll have to blog about that soon.  I think today I will try and get some actual sewing done, rather than just reading/writing about it ;)