The Splendid Sampler 8

I'm still working on these little blocks, which now number 37 as at last Sunday. I still have 3 of these in progress because I'm still working one is appliqué, another is embroidery and the third has wee tiny hexagons, so the are going to need a bit of time spent on them, but that's ok.

So, since my last post on the blocks this is where I am this month

This block, number 20, Nature's Walk, designed by Vikki Tucek, was one of those that needed a bit longer time to work on.  The fuchsias in this block should have been filled in, but left these as outline backstitch with some fly stitched leaves.  I had a couple of butterfly embellishments which I sewed on instead on embroidering those.  A bit of a cheat, but they gave a more dimensional look.

As a contrast to the more complex block is this very simple one designed by Amy Ellis and called Simple Surprises, which it was, really simple and took no time at all to do.  I made a feature of the squares with these owls which just fitted into them.

The owls will make another appearance later.

Next to be done was Constant Needle, an appliqué block by Laurie Simpson and it's block number 32.

I used Bondaweb on the appliqué shapes and machine blanket stitched around the shapes.

Number 33 was designed by Pat Sloan, called Selvedge (or Selvage) Saver. I do save selvedges, so I was able to dip into my bag of selvedges and pull out a few

Like scraps it didn't make much of an impression on my saved selvedges! Good to put them to use though.

Block 34 was called Lemonade, designed by Amy Gibson slipping in a bit of curved piecing into this block.  I guess this must come from the saying "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade".

I tried to be clever and use a large centre square rather than four smaller ones, but that didn't quite work, so I did the four patch for the middle as described.

I like the effect of the fabrics, the white background one looks as though its one piece of fabric even though its pieced.

Following that was Block 35, Pretty By Hand by Kristyne Czepuryk.  A simple pieced block with embroidery added.  I started piecing the block straight away to work on the embroidery bit. I found that other makers used the fancy stitches on their machines to get the effect.  Why didn't I think of that?  They looked quite good and my embroidery stitches aren't always up to the job, but didn't look too bad.

Last in this round up is Block 37, Dashing By Chocolate by Laura Flynn.  I'm not sure what the title means as from the description there's no mention of chocolate.  Laura's motto is "The more fabrics in the quilt the better".  The owls had a starring part in this block and it was made with 5 different fabrics and combined a Churn Dash block with Flying Geese.

That's the round up so far, managing to mostly keep up with the blocks.  A new one is out tomorrow, so I will prepare that for Sewing Saturday this coming weekend, along with the hexagon block (Block 36) and do a post next month.

In between times you can catch up with me on Instagram.  My account on there is @suewilduk

For more details about the Splendid Sampler go to the website here and more details about the blocks here