Block 38 Nonsense - Anatomy Lessons

The sub title for block 38 is Anatomy Lessons and the history story was all about how the misguided knowledge of  female anatomy restricted what women were "allowed" to do. Meanwhile, personally, for block 38 I was having Logistical Lessons.  Away on a four day quilt retreat with my quilting buddies and without all my usual sewing/computer equipment I needed lessons from a buddy in how to get my photos onto the flickr page using only my laptop as well as lessons in using what I had to hand rather than pining over what I did not.

 As usual I selected at least three potential fabric groupings. But this was the one I settled on.  The central motif came from a Jane Sassaman fabric that arrived in the mail as a surprise gift from RCCheryl some weeks ago. It has a very large repeat and initially I wanted to use the fabric in the rectangular areas but there were not enough of the motifs in the fat quarter. Now I'm looking at the photo I think I should rotate the image one quarter to the right so the white-dot-on-purple underline is at the base of the block.

The four smaller inner triangles are from the Basic Greys collection - I have four or five of these in the green colorway and they are very useful as supporting fabrics. And the stripe is from the Splendor collection by Northcott. Three totally different fabric collections/manufacturers.

 Posing my block was also a lesson in logistics as it was raining and dreary for both Saturday and Sunday. Here it is propped up in a corner of our sewing space.

And here it is in the fabric shop that is also on the same premises. The shop is quite small and stocks only Moda products but inevitably over the weekend we all manage to make several purchases.

 To add to my fabric collection I found some blues and greens for a potential new project along with a good piece of yardage in a white - always useful and perhaps a sashing candidate. Then there were a couple of pieces that may go into a June Bride quilt along with some others for the "just because" collection. After last week when I handmade a circle template for the center of block 37 and it was not quite perfect I added a bag of the Karen Kay Buckley larger perfect circles as well as a nifty new gadget, the strip stick, which is designed to help in pressing a more even seam line. I'm looking forward to putting all these to good use.

The sad news about our retreat location is that we discovered the owners are planning on closing it down in June 2014 so next May will be our last retreat there - our first was in 2007.

Lastly, I took advantage of the big design wall in the workroom to put up all my Grandmother's Choice blocks for an "in progress" photo - there are too many now for my design wall space. It's good to see all the blocks together; you get a similar view by going to the Grandmother's Choice set in my photostream on the flickr site.

Eleven blocks to go now in this project and the last block will have been made and the putting together portion will begin for me. Sashing decisions have been made and begun but until all the blocks are made specific layout choices cannot be finalised.

Now I must go and unpack my bags from the weekend and try to restore some order to the chaos in my sewing room.