The devil is in the details- Girl Skipping Rope take 2

     After 3 days of sewing, unsewing, design tweaking, and re-working an entire section, the first paper-pieced block I've ever designed and drafted on my own is done.  So much work never went into a 10-inch block!  
     Meet Ginger:

    

She's more than a little patchy- a testament to my lack of paper-piecing skills.  The head section was the part I had to tweak.  Those pesky y-seams!  The second incarnation was done without them, and came out much neater.  There are a few other spots that didn't need to be chopped up so much, but I wasn't looking at the big picture when I was piecing, and then the block came out a rectangle.  For me, squaring up meant adding fabric, not trimming back! 
    Nevertheless, I think she turned out well (I can't bring myself to refer to her as an inanimate object.  We spent too much time together).  I'm very sad to see her go (as are my children), but this week she'll be on her way to her new home in Melbourne, Australia.  Hope you like her, Jane! 
     Next month's Piece Bee With You block shouldn't be so much of a struggle for me now that I've got one under my belt.  Some takeaways from constructing Ginger:

• The first sketch should not be the final draft
• Draft the design using squares, rectangles and triangles.  Here I did the opposite- chopping the design up into squares, rectangles and triangles, which resulted in umpteen teeny pieces
• Avoid y-seams if at all possible
• Know the targeted block size beforehand
• Measure twice, cut once (an oldie but goodie)

Just for fun, here is a pictorial history of Ginger's progression (first blogged here):

girl skipping rope

     Oh my sainted aunt!  I jumped in feet first with this block!  For the Piece Bee With You October block, I sketched out this for Jane, who requested girls in dresses.  All those tiny pieces- what was I thinking?  I'll tell you what I was thinking... I fell in love with the sketch and knew she had to be made.  So post her in the swap's Flickr pool I did, to make it official.  Now I'm committed.
     See how nicely the lower half of her body came out?

 She was easy, until I got to her upper extremities.  So many teeny pieces of fabric to maneuver through my beloved, if temperamental, machine.  There are a couple of places where y-seams are required- putting those newly acquired skills to use (though still in the process of trying to master them).  Because of this, and the teensy weensy pieces in the top third of the block, a few bulky spots were unavoidable.  I'm hoping that the recipient will love her so much that she won't notice :)
   p.s. I unintentionally worked some Denyse Schmidt's Katie Jump Rope into the block.  I was looking for green in my stash to represent grass, and this was the only thing that could pass.  How neat is that?

A quilt retreat, a first day of school and a scrapbuster swap

     My first quilt retreat!  A handful Bay Area MQG quilters spent a long weekend near Sonora at the vacation home of one of the guild members.  It was enjoyable getting to know the ladies who went on the retreat.  I didn't accomplish much sewing (three quilt blocks), but for me it was the perfect balance of sewing and socializing, chocolate and wine.
     And I received some lovely gifts:

I owe my retreat mates a goodie bag, which I will bring to the next guild meeting.  I've got some ideas that require a little knitting or sewing.  Thank goodness I only have four gifts to assemble since the next guild meeting is less than a week and a half away.
     I can't believe we have a 3rd and a 4th grader in the house.  Time passes so quickly!  Monday morning was hectic with the drama and excitement of the first day of the school year.  I think it felt more chaotic than it actually was because I felt out of sorts from being away all weekend.  It took a couple of days to get back into the homemaking routine.  I've finally unpacked the fabric I picked up on the retreat:

The other reason I only finished three blocks- getting a little side-tracked by scrumptious fabric!  Can you believe I found yardage of Katie Jump Rope?!  I've always liked it but was too late to the quilting party to see it in shops.
     Encouraged by one of my fellow guild members, I've joined my first block swap.  It's a scrapbuster swap, so we use scraps and fabrics from our own stash to make the same blocks.  I've signed up to make twenty "postage stamp" blocks.  Twenty.  A little ambitious for my first swap, but I do have a large stash of fabric and scraps scattered all over the house.