Yesterday I managed to finish two of the Splendid Sampler II blocks, all sashed and quilted. As the next one was released yesterday afternoon I carried straight on and made it! I’ve quilted it this afternoon.

The Splendid Sampler 2 is a weekly stitch-a-long by Pat Sloan, there’s over 80 designers involved who have all contributed a block, so there’s lots of different styles and techniques. There’ll be 100 blocks altogether, I’m planning to make two quilts with probably 49 in each, so two might get made into cushions, or if this week is anything to go by they might just get rejected!

The first one I stitched was by Lori Kennedy, it’s called Rose and Dot, after the two ladies who inspired her to sew, her mother Dorothy and her grandmother Rose. I was quite pleased how this one went initially, I did needle-turn applique and it looked pretty good! Then I quilted it!

I decided to go round and round in circles, centering on the flower, only they weren’t very good circles! I think where I went wrong was that initially I tried to turn the fabric, rather than just moving it in the right direction. It also means the leaves somewhat disappear! It’s all good practice!!

The second block is by Sharon Burgess, it’s called For the Love and it’s inspired by the tulips which bloom in the parks of her home town. It’s English Paper Piecing…I really don’t think it’s going to be my thing! It was so fiddly stitching the shapes around the paper templates, not helped by having to reject the early ones as I’d cut out my pieces just a tad too small.  Then I had to stitch them together, remove the backing paper and then stitch it on to the backing fabric…faffy!

By this time I really wasn’t that keen on the block, it was nearly in the reject pile already!! I persevered and sashed and quilted it with a simple triangular design…and I like it now! It’s amazing the difference quilting can make- it can make or break a block!!

Yesterdays block is called My Flock, by Brenda Ratliff, it’s all about sewing and quilting with friends, her flock. It’s a nice simple block of flying geese, so I decided to do a blue background for the sky and quilt it just by extending the lines off the wings, a bit like a slip-stream. I like this one.

I initially cut a 1.5″ sashing so once all the seams were stitched each block would be 8″ square. After I’d stitched the first three I decided to cut the sashing to 2″ so I had plenty of spare if one comes out smaller than another due to quilting styles. The backing is in the same fabric as the sashing, so the back of the quilts will be varying squares of blue, grey and ivory.

I’ve stitched eight blocks now (92 to go!!)