I've been busy

For Christmas, I got some Flea Market Fancy from a quilting friend.  I added some solids and tone on tones to the Fat Quarter pack.

 Sometimes, I work late at night and my sewing room has pretty sad lighting.  So forgive the not so great pictures.  I've also got to use a camera that isn't part of my phone.

And sometimes I make good fabric choices (see the block on the right) and sometimes I make baaaaad choices (block on the left).

But I rarely regret doing the tutorials/quilt alongs at PS I Quilt. This one is her Pinwheel Sampler and I really like how it ended up.  I'm particularly fond of the grey and red Dutch Pinwheel. 

I've decided to do what many in the flickr group did - I'm putting pinwheel posts in the sashing.  I got these all trimmed up and the next step is going to be sewing them into pinwheels.  Almost done, and I can't wait.  This quilt is going to be great.

I've also been mucking about with my Strawberry Fields fabric.  About a year ago, I'd taken my jelly roll and sewn the strips together. 

They looked okay, but when I threw them together in a simple roman square layout for a baby quilt, I didn't like them.  At all.  So they got thrown in a bag.  And at one point, I chopped some of them up smaller and sewed them together in a 2" finished square, 2x3 layout. I had plans for them, but I just wasn't feeling it so they all got thrown back in a bag.

Until we pulled this dresser out of the basement and I decided I needed to make something colourful to top it.  And I had these roman square blocks just hanging out.

 

So I sewed them together.  And liked them.  But I had a dilemma.  I didn't have enough of the roman square blocks to actually make an entire quilt, but I didn't want to use just a few.

So, I played with it a bit.  I'll be able to use all of the roman squares as well as the postage stamps I'd put together.  I'll add some of the sashing fabric above and end up with a nice sized quilt, even if it isn't quite the normal colours I use.

This is a better example of what I normally end up with.  I like colours.  I like jewel tones.  I like colour.  I'm probably slightly insane, based on the looks I got while putting this together.  But once together, the ladies at the retreat in October thought it looked pretty good.  At least that's what they told me :D