One of those days

Have you ever had one of those days where everything seems to go wrong? There's no milk left for your morning coffee, the handle breaks off your mug and you can't find a parking space?

I had one of those sewing days yesterday. Nothing dramatic happened but there was an endless stream of niggles.

I finished the Pine Needle Basket from the Craftsy Jinny Beyer BOM project and it went fine. Not great, just fine. It took me a good few hours though!

As always with these Craftsy blocks it came out 1/4" too small all around but I can fix that at the sashing stage. French homework is done!

I also finished up the two block 5s for the GenX Quilter's Moccasin BOM. I think I'm almost caught up now (May is block 6). Again these weren't particularly problematic (apart from trying to tear copy paper out of the paper foundation; I'll always use Cadol Doak's paper in the future) but took a good few hours.

Hopefully today is a new day and I've left the trials and tribulations of yesterday behind!

Desert and white oak

Sounds like an upmarket fragrance, doesn't it? Or maybe more like a supermarket brand body spray! Either way, it's the next instalment in the epic sewing week.

The "desert" bit comes from blocks 3 and 4 in the GenX Quilter's block of the month pattern for this year, called Moccasin.

They were fairly straightforward blocks, being shoo fly (or Sherman's March or Church Dash) blocks plus a Bears paw block.

I'm slowly catching up with the BOM - I think I'm only two months behind now!

Next up was the White Oak Basket, one of two for the Craftsy BOM for May.

This month's blocks were a little like French homework - you know that you have to do it but would rather do fun stuff instead. But if you leave it, it's going to be looming over you all holidays. Best to get it out of the way ASAP. Particularly as this month's blocks had 13 pages of instructions; yes, 13!

I'm not 100% happy with the block (I somehow managed to miscut the basket lip fabric so that more than just the border print is visible in some spots). However I know that I'm just being picky and should instead embrace the glory of those partial seams which came together with no problems!

Pine needle basket is the other block for this month. I'll get cracking with that tomorrow.

If you loved it, then you should have put a handle on it

Beyoncé, forgive me - I couldn't resist!

This months Craftsy BOM block with Jinny Beyer was a Cherry Basket with handle. I also has appliqué flowers but apparently we have to wait for later in the year for those.

The piecing of the block was fairly straight forward but this month we also had bias bars to consider. I haven't made bias bars before (bias? Eek!) so had to get so Prym bias bars to assist. These things are clever. I must find out what else I can use them for.

The handle was appliquéd on to the block with some fairly basic (for me at least) blind hemming. 

The basket looks a little naked without flowers but hopefully they'll come soon. Roll on April!