Cynthia England projects

I've taken two classes with Cynthia England.  The first was at Painted Pony N Quilts way back in 2010 and the pattern she taught was Life's a Beach.  I enjoyed the class-she's a fabulous teacher.  And I had brought my Featherweight with me and kept burning my hand on the lightbulb cover.  She had brought things to sell-sticks for pressing strips, LED lightbulbs, Karen Kay Buckley scissors etc.  Well after I burned myself for the THIRD time I jumped up and bought myself a new LED bulb.  It is great-much brighter than what I had and it never gets hot.  But back to the pattern, I still didn't feel confident with paper piecing-in any style.

So a few years later, and now a few years ago, QuiltyBFF and I took a class with her at HQF.  Again, she's a wonderful teacher but afterwards I didn't get back to this project either.  I even loaded up my Featherweight trolley with both kits, mini iron etc.  Nope.  Still intimidated.  So last night I unpacked my trolley.  I set up my sewing machine and mini iron and pulled out the Beach pattern and kit.  I decided to start on a bit of the beach as it was all sandy fabrics and it wouldn't matter if I messed up.  I studied the pattern and even cut out two pieces of fabric and ironed on the pattern pieces.  I'm hoping tonight I will actually sew them together. 

 

I'm keen to get these done because I also have the kit and pattern for this beautiful heron. Herons are among my favorite  birds, if not my favorite.  I would love to make this one and hang it in a prominent place.

 

More little blocks

This was a doozy!

 Up to eleven!

 

I am such a Lemming

I saw on Sisters Choice blog about the Little Blocks 365 and could not resist signing up.  I'm six weeks behind but I don't care.  All of the blocks are 3.5 inches and are paperpieced!  I've been wanting to get proficient at paperpiecing-I think I've actually completed one whole block-and there is a world of gorgeous patterns out there.  This also pushed ahead of my Sashing project this weekend but I loved every minute of it.  I am using my Civil War repro scraps and will be cutting into some other pieces to increase variety of colors.  I hope I can get caught up and keep up!
 

A little chocolate

So I decided to clear some blocks  off my table that I had cut out a couple of years ago.  I had "gotten stuck" by the Arrowhead block below and was too intimidated to try the paper-piecing in the star block.  These blocks are for the Chocolatier quilt.

And here is my checkoff photo of the quilt.  I'm hoping to get some more of these finished so I can clear it out totally!