Plugging away with squares.

I've been working on my Brit Quilt Swap   for my secret partner...  This was where we left off.

(Inspiration picture from Adirana Oancia .)  I would have liked to use my scraps or something from my stash, but my "scrapstash" ain't up to much yet, and it certainly wasn't up to this plan.  So, here's how I got round it.  (Shameless plugging to follow, I'm not being paid to say any of it I just like to share good shopping experiences!)  
There's a lovely wee shop online,  Carol's patchwork and quilting shop  (click on it to go there).  She sells packs of cut squares and strips, in various sizes.  I'd bought a few packs from her to make my Single Girl rings.   I emailed Carol, told her what I wanted to do, and asked if she could help.  Well if you don't ask you'll never know eh?  Turned out she was happy to help, and after a few emails she came up with a custom pack for me, at no extra charge!  Wonderful service, eh?  And the bundle she sent was exactly what I needed.  So, if, like me, you want to do something colourful but don't have the biggest scrap pile or budget, I cant recommend this shop enough.  


So, this is how it's gone so far...

Top layout looked a bit too, well, like strips of colour.  So I mixed it up a bit more in the second picture.  If you can't spot the difference that's cool, but I've been obsessing about this for days..  Which is pretty anal even for me....  A-n-y-waaay.....  Eventually got it stitched together and it looked like this.

After a day or so of being too scared to chop it up I got stuck in!  There followed a few days of sashing, unpicking, rearranging and unpicking again.  I've blunted 2 seam rippers...  No Narcolepsy related errors this time, just my bad maths and shocking attempts at a quarter inch seam.  (Though I did listen to Rhonda's podcast one afternoon whilst sewing and laughed so hard I got cataplexy and smacked my head off the table).

What do you think so far?  I'm actually rather pleased with it!  First time in ages (it feel like it anyway) that I've made something I really like.  Now to figure out getting a tree on it!  Bit confused here, as I think it would be much easier to quilt it before I put the tree on, but then it would have a back and I wanted to do machine embroidery on the tree and the backside of my embroidery should never be seen...  So I think maybe tree first?  Ooh I don't know.  I think I'll just sit and look at it like this for a couple of days, enjoy it whilst it's safe!