Block Party for 1!

At weekends I try not to do any 'work' related sewing, and keep any free time I get for pleasure sewing.

So yesterday afternoon, I had a wee block party all to myself!

WARNING:  Those of you who are HST (half square triangles) Phobic, look away now!!!!

First up was the Wonky Star block:



Don't mind the fabrics.  This was more about technical play than colour play!

 I've recently been blog-chatting with Susan - A Canadian Abroad, who is making some gorgeous coloured wonky star blocks.  I asked her to write a tutorial for them, but she set me the challenge of writing one instead!

So I did what all good teachers do - surfed the internet to find one that someone had already written!!!!

I followed this tutorial by The Silly BooDilly, which is easy to follow.

I really enjoyed this block and it will definitely appeal to my love of using scraps.  More to come me thinks!

Next up was The Nautilus:

This looks a lot like The Monkey Wrench (which has squares in the centre instead of triangles). 

The fun thing about this block is the affect you get when you put lots of them together, as seen in this example of Monkey Wrench blocks:

I got the pattern for this block and the next two from my friend Sarah at Sew Me.  We did a book swap over the Easter Holidays and I photocopied patterns from one of her block books (can't remember the name of it sorry!).

Ok, the next block I tried was called Double Pinwheel:

Again, mingy fabrics, but you get the idea!

I love pinwheels, but thought I'd try a variation on the common single pinwheel.

BTW, all these blocks end up 12.5".

And finally, a block with no HST, called Carrie Nation:

Strangely, I found this one more tricky than the others, but only because my plain coral fabric was slightly thicker than the others, so it gave me no end of problems when it came to butting up seams (there are lots of seams to butt!).

So there we have my block party pieces!

And with the leftover trimmings, I played some more and made this:

A friend of mine hates wasting any wee bits of fabric and likes ideas on how to use them for her card making hobby. 

I told her about an idea where you throw down a load of bits of fabric, thread, even wool, sew over them lots of times and 'hey presto', you've made your own 'fabric' to cut out shapes and stick on cards. 

To make it easier sewing over all the fabric shards, I placed a piece of water-soluble fabric on top (available from craft shops), then did lots of sewing, before melting the ws.fabric off in tepid water. 

Let your piece dry before using it whatever way your creativity takes you.  Great fun! 

I might post a wee tute on how to do this with a few more pics. 

Hope you had a fun, creative weekend, whatever you got up to!