Building Blocks Tuesday

Hello and welcome to friends old and new.  Today I am honoured to be the Guest Blogger for Jen at Quilter in the Closet while she is taking a little summer break.  It was Jen who gave me the impetus to start this blog back in January when she issued her 100 Day Challenge without which I may well have still been procrastinating.  Therefore it seems fitting that my first ever guest blog should be for Jen.   It would be wonderful if you could all link up your blocks too, to make my first guest post really successful, the icing on the cake.  Did someone say cake??????

As this is a very special post for me I am launching the start of a new quilt, new to me anyway, although I'm sure most of you will have heard of, and some will quake at the thought of, The Gypsy Wife.  Oh yes, I have dreamed about it for over two years, I have had the pattern for over a year, and now I have started it.   If you haven't seen it before here it is

Beautiful isn't it?   The challenge to me is in the complexity of it, the sheer number of blocks combined with the strips, and putting it together with those partial seams, but I love to challenge myself so here are the first blocks.

Bordered square in a square 5 inch finished

Hourglass with two borders 6 inch finished

Square in a square 3 inch finished, I need another 22 of this size for the quilt, and no I am not kidding, there are another 12 in different sizes too.

Pinwheel 4 inch finished, yes I agree I didn't do a very good job of the centre

Puss in the Corner 5 inch finished, no I haven't pressed it very well, you don't miss much do you?

I have started with section 1 and these are all the blocks in this section.  Yes I know it was an easy section and they will get harder but please let me bask in my moment of glory with the almost finish of a section.

This is the first Puss in the Corner I made, it was too much purple for the section, but I need two for the quilt so it won't go to waste.

This is the one I made a mistake with, yes with such a simple block, but you get the bad as well as the good here.  What did I do wrong?  I cut the centre square 3 inches instead of 3.5 inches,  Actually I rather like it so I may just use it anyway.  AND, wouldn't a perfect quilt be just plain boring?  If I was the perfect quilter (is there such a thing?) you would all be watching hoping I made a mistake, or is that just me?

These are the 1.5 inch strips I cut, I won't need all of these for this section and yes I know I duplicated one, but the strips run the length of the quilt and some lengths are so long they need two width of fabric strips.  No, they are not all 1.5 inches, some are 1 inch........If you are interested I believe there are 55 strips in total, not including the long ones.

If you are interested there is a Gypsy Wife quilt along on just now, they are on to section 7 so I am a little behind, but I've been following it since January.   It is being held by Hydeeann from Splish Splash Stash and Megan of Jaffa Quilts.  There is an excellent document of all the blocks in each section and another on the strips.  Here are the links for the block chart  and the strips.   If you read both blogs from the start of the  quilt along you will get all the info and excellent tutorials.

If you have been before you might be wondering about my circles quilt, so here is my progress.

These are the finished (unless I add something) blocks.......

and these are the rest.  Oh yes, two quarter circles left to appliqué and they are already made, doing my happy dance........

So, that's it for this week, I hope you enjoyed your visit and it would be lovely to see you again.

Until then,
Smiles from
Kate

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