Blocks all finished

Yesterday being Friday the day started with a link up on Teams with some of my work colleagues. I set up Breakfast club just prior to the UK lockdown in March and we have carried it on every week since. It's not surprising since we used to meet up at work on a Friday for breakfast club in the refectory. As a group we didn't want to miss out on our chats about films, food and drink and the fun activities we had planned or had done since our last meeting. Since March it has become a support group as well as a social event. Michelle, one of the group, bought a sewing machine during the first lockdown but she has only taken it out of the box to check that it was all in order and no problems. Although very busy she is going to get it out of the box and try to at least make a mask before next Friday. At times our link ups are a bit like school show and tell.

Friday has become my non working day but yesterday I had a meeting online with two of my colleagues which didn't finish until nearly noon so my day got off to a slow start. My aim for the day was to complete the 3 remaining blocks for the Austen Family Album quilt. This was put out in 2014 as a block of the week. I decided to make the blocks some time later. I had a problem with one of the blocks as the measurements were wrong and so I put it away for a while. I spent the afternoon making the 3 blocks.  Cutting the fabric was a little difficult  and caused slight pain as my finger is still very bruised and sore.  I'm still not sure how I managed to injure myself just shutting a gate.

The first block was all half square triangles. This went together very quickly and easily.

The second block caused the problems as I kept on sewing the half square triangle to the solid squares the wrong way. I think I unpicked some pieces several times and with some having unpicked them, I realised I'd stitched them correctly in the first place. Never mind the block got made and I like the end result.

The third block had a correction on the pattern but it still came up a little small but I can correct that when I do the sashing. 

Here are all the 36 completed blocks.

 

Although they don't look it because of the angle of the photos all the blocks are the same size within a very small margin except the one identified earlier. Next job is to trim all the blocks but I'll leave that a day or two. These blocks were all made from fat quarters or scraps left over from other projects. I don't have any space for storing yardage so now I need to decide on the fabric I want for the sashing and order it online. I'll think about the border and the backing once the sashing is all done.  Overall I'm very pleased with the blocks. There are a lot of half square triangles and the points are mostly looking good. The ones that aren't can be camouflaged by the quilting.

Last evening I did some stitching on my millennium sampler and got to the end of the right border. I'll show you photos tomorrow. For now I'm linking this post with Sarah from Confessions of a fabric addict for Can I get a whoop whoop? link up. Do pop over and visit. Her finished reindeer quilt is adorable.

The rain has stopped for a little while so John and I are going out for our daily exercise before it restarts. There is a brief window before the forecast suggests that for the rest of the day there is 90% chance of rain. Typical, just when I wanted to get out and do some tidying in the garden.

Take care

Lyndsey