My Wonky World - plus!

My Wonky blocks have arrived from the US !   And the lovely Jane our swap mamma chose a lovely selection for me with my youngest daughter in mind - I am thinking she may well like the quilt I will make from them !

These sure make a bright fun village!  These are absolutely fabulous and I love them all!  My new blogging friend Leanne at  Daisy and Jack made block number 5 with the beach houses - I just love it!  I just love them all!




And don't forget I have Helen's blocks to add to these so I actually now have 13 houses - oops just as well I am not superstitious !  But I think I will have to make one myself too!

And there will be more to come with trees and stars and who knows what next!






But that is not all that has been happening - I know some of you have been seduced by Clare at Selfsewn to venture into hand sewing and English Paper Piecing with the beautiful Rose Star block - you can see Clare's lovely work on her blog, Lucy's here and Mary's here! and here is the link to the Flickr Rose Star Block Party/  Clare has set up.  




Well I have been longing to jump in and when I saw these fabrics on a recent trip to Lewes and the Patchwork Dog and Basket I knew these were the fabrics I wanted to work with, plus solids and perhaps some text fabric.  They are thirties repro prints and are small scale prints that will cut up nicely..

And here is my first Rose Star Block!

Except when I loaded it up on the Flickr site I realised it wasn't - I had some bits missing - but I am thinking this is right now

Bigger and hopefully better.  I am hoping to have a traditional feel but not quite ....will have to see how it goes!


I have completed the middle hexagon of two more blocks and am currently deciding on my points...and then must remember my petals!


I love to do a bit of hand sewing and having been concentrating on machine stitching of late, I now realise how much I have been missing that intimacy, of just my needle, my fabric and me!


  

Wonkiness!.

You may have noticed a bit of wonky behaviour on this blog of late culminating in my completion of 11 wonky houses!

Before that I was tempted into wonkiness first by the lovely Susan and her brilliant wonky star quilt which she exported to Finland I think! 




And then I was drawn into it by the innocent seeming Judith with the first block in the Bee Blessed bee.  This resulted in some Wonky Star Bee blocks, 
but continued into twinkle !  A baby quilt I made and have now handed over to baby Alia!

I wanted a little more wonkiness in my life and signed up for the Wonky Houses Swap.  Well it appears that even that amount of wonkiness has not sated my desire for one step short of madness so the next round of Wonkiness has been announced and we will be continuing in our wayward ways but focusing on trees next.


This round is open to you all to sign up but will be run differently.  We make either 4, 8 or 12 wonky tree blocks in green, or coloured fabrics or both !  We send them to Jane and she kindly redistributes them!   This round starts on 1 March and we must get our blocks to Jane by 1 May.  Fancy joining us? 


The information on Round two is here! 


There are more rounds planned...for more information on those click here! 




Join me if you will in the wonky world....

Last of the wild wonky houses.... for a while!

Will Hadley say I have really lost it now?  Will Judith take all my bottles away?


You may find these slightly less wild or you may not but these are the last wonky house blocks I am making for now....

One windswept house!

I did a windmill as there are a few on top of the South Downs just a bit away from us.  

A quilter lives in this little house as you can see by the quilts hanging to dry on the washing line - and yes they do hang free from the block for a bit of 3D effect!


This gives me a total of 11 - the number I need to send off to the US!




I couldn't decide which one I should keep, so instead of making 12 and dithering about which one to choose, I will send them all away and see what I get in return.  Then I figured I could make a block to fit in with them.


Onto the siggy blocks then - 11 of them to make!


After wondering what pen I should use I tried out a few of the ones I have in the house - I ironed the writing then washed and ironed the writing again and the clear winner is the Sharpie pen!   

But as I thought it was a bit thick and a bit green - well quite a lot green .....and because I don't want to leave my car unlocked in town to get one I like better, I have decided to go a different way...






Here is my prototype block and it cannot wash away as it is free motion stitched.  Quite a bit of concentration to get all that first line in but I reckon that after 11 my FM writing should be greatly improved!  Worth it just for that!

Then I altered one of the earlier houses a spool house block with scissors - I cut out the handles and added a door and a window!

Hoping it looks better!






Finally here is a mosaic of all the wonky houses...

Better get on with those siggy blocks so they can be flown across the pond!




PS I forgot to wish you all a Happy Burn's Night!  Hope you had some haggis and whisky!  I'll be having mine at the weekend!

Wonky spool houses!

As I was browsing the Modern Blocks book I recently purchased, I came across a spools block...and had a vision of a Wonky spool house block for the Wonky House block swap! (Try saying that when you are sober!)




And then I made this....

And this....

By the way Hadley accused me of dreaming my previous houses up in a drunken stupor but I have to admit that these were made without the assistance of alcoholic libation...honest!  Just my wacky imagination at work...getting wackier by association with my Wonky House block buddies!

Wonky in the woods and with garden!

I now have six wonky house blocks done - half way! - for the Wonky House Block Swap.  Yeah!! 


They seem to take me a loooong time to do.....and I'm not sure why that is!?


I may do a few applique ones as they seem quickest but I am challenging myself in this swap and most have been done with paper or foundation piecing.


Perhaps that is why I am struggling and putting it off??  Never been a great friend of this technique and this year I do want to get over that...I shall persevere!


This one though I was liberated in doing ....

No pattern was used in the making of this block I just pieced bits together.  This suited me as I am trying to use up scraps though my little scraps take a while to piece together.  Mmmm just looking at this photo online - that owl??  Should he stay or should he go???








This one was back to paper piecing - with an added challenge - a few gentle curves.  I also decided to add in a bit of applique with my flowering hedge. 

No fussy cut animals were harmed in the making of this block as I thought there might be some sane members of my group who would prefer just to have a wonky house...?   


Oh I might go back and add something in ....I have to confess I have added a few bits to one other!

I will be relieved when I am finished with these - not because I have not enjoyed them - far from it - I am just conscious of the deadline sneaking up on me and I don't want to be late...I also have some siggy blocks to do and have never done those before!

More Wonky houses!

One of the differences between my two wonky house blocks and others in the group is the size of the house in the block.  Mine were quite small meaning I needed a lot of background to make my 12.5" squares.





So I have scaled up the scrappy house and cut back on the background and voila here is a bigger version of my first block - minus the chimney - they use oil or gas I think!  Anyway it is warm enough to satisfy one little kitty napping in the window!

Here is my next block - an applique block

I need to finish all 11 blocks by mid February as I need to post them to the US and do not want to be late!  I also have siggy blocks to make....haven't really looked into that yet!

The Wonky House

I have joined up with this Wonky House Blocks swap!  We are to make 12 wonky house blocks - send 11 to the mama along with siggy blocks and keep one for ourselves.  We can make our blocks any way we choose!


I lulled myself into a false sense of security thinking this couldn't be that hard after doing wonky stars - how wrong can you get! 


This one block 12.5" square or just about, took most of the day to make!  Crazy or what?

I paper pieced the house and that went ok apart from getting the bits of house attached to the wrong side and wondering why the roof wouldn't fit - sorry should have taken a photo I know!


Then I thought well the background will be easy as I just fill in - this is where I came unstuck!  And had to add extra bits in to the house or unpick lots!


Normally a Y-seam seems ok to me but I seemed to be creating them all over the place.  Not my best sewing!






The second one was easier and a bit more fun too!  I paper pieced the light house, free pieced the background which was not very wonky really and then added detail with raw edge applique - think this could be the less frustrating way to go....

Don't think the cat looks too happy do you?


I am wanting a whole village including a shop, a school, a church and pub of course - just like my village (minus the shop sadly)....