Schedules and Countdowns

I swear as soon as someone mentions the C word, time takes on a different speed. Suddenly people talk in "days until Christmas" instead of weeks and we all feel a sense of impending panic.

 I haven't posted so much this month so I thought you might like to see progress so far on my Modern Sampler class.

Although I teach weekly, my students attend on a fortnightly basis and I have been giving out new block instructions every second class, once every four weeks. (Sorry if this makes your head hurt). This has created quite a relaxed pace with pretty much everyone keeping up.

I am making another quilt, along with my ladies, it's a very different palette for me.

In the first month we did the following blocks with a sort of cross feature, for those who wanted to stretch themselves a wee bit, I added in an Ohio variation and called it Ohio Cross. In my own blocks below I did not pay attention to colour value and am disappointed at the results. My star points are lost against my dark background...........and I am the teacher, doh!!

In month 2, the block was called Susanna - basically an Economy block in the centre surrounded by squares. I was trying to encourage a scrappy look and anyone who wanted something a little more challenging could FP a more complicated centre. My lesson in this month was how difficult I find it to be totally random.

Block 3 was really a choice of two different blocks, one a challenging FP block - Morning Star - and the other, Rolling Stone, or Broken Wheel depending upon placement of fabrics. I was trying to offer blocks where the patchwork results in circular appearance. I learned that I wasn't in the mood to do a 3rd Morning Star and tossed in a total variation - well it is a sampler, and my ladies are allowed to do variations too!

Next week I will be teaching what has become one of my favourite blocks, the Granny square.

Here is a sneaky peek.

This weekend, I had a little help in the sewing room - my threads were "tidied" up. Now this is someone looking forward to the "C" word in a big way. Hurry up Santer......