Mercury Burst

Robyn from robynieland asked if I'd test her Mercury Burst paper pieced block and I leapt at the chance! It looks difficult and fiddly but it's actually not, just involved! The pattern comes with a suggested scheme of lights vs. darks and accent colour placement but also has a blank pattern so you can colour in your own and given its nature you could end up with radically different blocks just by using different combinations of colours. Robyn has some examples on her blog. I decided that as I'm what I'd describe as an 'advanced beginner' when it comes to paper piecing I'd leave the fancy stuff for another time! Hazel needs pillows in her new room and as this is a big block at 60cm (24"), and therefore perfect for a big pillow, I made it in colours she approved of but that I liked too - love pink and orange together!

I hadn't done paper piecing for ages and had pretty much forgotten how to start so I had to look that up. One thing I had remembered was that using a bit of glue stick helps keep things in place. Unfortunately I didn't think far enough ahead so I'd glued into seam allowances and was too liberal with my application (if some is good more must be better right?) so when it came to taking the paper off it was a bit of a fiddly, swear-y, mission in places! Must remember that for next time because when the paper sort of pops off with that ripping along the seam thing it's super-satisfying, right up there with popping bubble wrap.

Overall I'm really pleased with how it came out and would love to do a few more as a quilt one day. The pattern is available from Robyn here. According to Hazel my next project is her super-cool unicorn that has been doing the rounds online lately. Even though she's not particularly a girly-girl Hazel likes to say "you should always be yourself unless you can be a unicorn and then you should be a unicorn". Amen.

Let's go #2016! Happy New Years! 🦄🦄🦄 • Pattern by @robynie • ✂️by @lizfromshush • #tulapink #tulapinkelizabeth @freespiritfabric #iamafreespirit @aurifilthread #aurifil

A photo posted by Tula Pink (@tulapink) on Jan 1, 2016 at 11:03am PST

February already

Holy cow, how did it get to be February already? I went a little quiet before Xmas because of all the things that I couldn't show but then somehow I forgot to get back on the blogging horse after spending 6 weeks in Canada and the States soaking up enough cold and snow to last me for another few years. Sadly, thanks to global climate change, it wasn't all that cold (up to 20 degrees C in Acton just before Xmas!) or snowy but I enjoyed it very much anyways.

I went a little nuts with making stuff this year to be honest, but I got it all done and I think that aside from stuff for Hazel and Mat, I made most of the presents. I have no idea why my immediate family doesn't qualify for handmade but there you go! I might string it out over a couple posts just to make them a little easier to wade through.

I made a couple of lap quilts for my brother and his wife and they were actually done in plenty of time.

I made another red and white 'maths fact' quilt for Mike because he loves the Swiss cross motif. I do like this pattern even though I find it awfully repetitive to cut and sew! I think if I were to do it again (never say never) I might just do the plusses instead of alternating them with the multiplication block.

I think their gigantic Christmas tree sets it off to perfection!

For Kate I made a Sweet Daisy quilt (pattern by Red Pepper Quilts). This photo is from before it was quilted but I didn't get a good one of it all finished up. I had an awful time with either the batting or backing shrinking and just about despaired but some very vigorous stretching while ironing got it flattened out to a reasonable level. I'm not a wrinkly/puffy quilt fan, but I definitely had to get over it for this quilt!

 I did the back in a zigzag pattern which I liked almost as much as the front!

We spent Xmas in Acton, just outside of Boston, where Mike and Kate live in the most amazing old house. Such a lovely part of the world even with no leaves and no snow. The house backs out onto woods that merge into a regional park so it feels like you could walk for days (aside from the occasional golf course and large house)

Concord, Massachusetts (apparently pronounced Kon-kerd by the locals so now you know), is also nearby and in addition to buying nice cheese and looking in nice shops and admiring freaking amazing old houses, we visited the old cemetery and I loved paying my respects at Louisa May Alcott's grave where, along with other authors there, people leave pens next to the headstones.

Hexies

After our quilt show at Alberton we decided to make them some coasters as a thank you for being so lovely and helpful and promoting us as they did. Four inches* square was the size we decided on and whatever we wanted to do after that. I was going to do a postage stamp one with really little squares, but then Mel did something similar and despite the fact she told me to just go for it with mine I thought nope, I'm going to go even tougher than little squares. The only thing fiddlier than that I could think of was little hexies and I knew there was a project with them in one of the Zakka books I have. It ended up not being what I wanted, but there were bright colours and linen, so I found a page of 1/2" hexies online and just whipped out this pretty thing.



And no I didn't actually "whip it out", it went in fits and starts and I've only just finished it today and our meeting is tonight. I work best to a deadline :D I was going to sew on the backing right sides together and just turn it out, but as I discovered when I'd sewn it all together, it was slightly smaller than the pattern I'd devised and only just made 4" at its largest dimensions. I ended up trimming it square and doing binding which was a pity as I think it looked great cut before the binding went on and the binding itself looks a touch bulky on a small item. I'm not even sure if turning it would have given that really nice straight-edge look but I don't know how you could achieve it without getting fraying.

Anyways, it IS pretty and I quite like it, I'd even use it myself I think! Maybe I'll have to make some more, although it's kind of a pity to cover it up with a big old mug, so perhaps mine would be used more like this




*yes it's kind of weird that we do these things in inches when in all other aspects of life we're metric! At the very least though, quilting has given me some idea of what 5 or 10 inches is, when before I would have had no idea (I visualise the cutting mat markings). Don't ask me about Fahrenheit or pounds though, or how many inches in a foot.

All my stuff looks the same

I was sitting on the couch eating breakfast this morning when I looked over and saw this pile on the shelf next to me

There is an almost-finished crocheted coat hanger and yarn from that, and fabrics I've been making hexagons from. My first thought was "they all look so good together", my second thought was "they're actually mostly the same colour, I just need to add some aqua to the coat hanger" and then I thought "I'm going to make a matching hanger with aqua in the middle and orange on the outside". And then all my stuff will look the same! :)

New Quilts for Alberton Beds

The New Quilts for Alberton Beds finished yesterday afternoon when we gathered up the quilts into big piles and took them away, leaving the house looking a little less colourful!  I think it went pretty well, we've had some nice feedback and quite a few people stopped by to talk to us on Saturday and Sunday as part of Heritage Week. Unfortunately the exhibition had been put into the Workshops section of the brochure, along with an invitation to come along for free workshops on quilting which sent (some of) us into a bit of a tizzy (ok me) but in the end it was ok. There were a few people who showed up expecting something, but I don't think they were too put out to get some time on a design wall making quilt patterns and then getting to try out hand quilting and binding. One lady, when we mentioned coming along to our group, announced she was a traditionalist and really didn't like the colours of modern fabrics and flounced off, apparently with a mouth like a cat's bum. We all just looked bemused I think! :D So if that was it in terms of active negativity then we did well.



Now what the heck do I do with all these quilts I have back in my house?

I've got a style!

Last Christmas we did a little present swap at our Monday Modern group. I made a pot holder and when Lou unwrapped it she knew straight away who had made it (and so did everyone else). I was puzzled because as far as I know I don't really have a definite style.

I was wrong, I do! I only just realised it though, when I was making up the info sheets for the quilt exhibition and my four quilts were on the same page briefly. I was quite taken aback when I saw them together like that, particularly the first three, because despite being quite different quilts, they're all remarkably similar when judged purely on colour. The oven mitt fits in perfectly so I can see how I was outed so easily!

I'm currently working on a red and white quilt and one with Lotta Jansdotter fabrics in oranges and blues and greens so I'm hoping that means I'm not going to typecast myself too much! I think having a style is great, but not if you don't push yourself to do different things sometimes.

Modern Building Blocks Quilt

Ages ago I did a post about starting to make the Moda Modern Building Blocks quilt. I did actually finish it quite quickly for such a big quilt (and for me!), but then it went off to a display case at Alberton without a photo of it finished and it's been there for almost 2 months. We finally set up the quilts for our Monday Modern 'New Quilts for Alberton Beds' exhibition and I got a proper photo at long last.

The colours aren't that great as the only place we could find that was big enough that we could hold it out fully was on the verandah where the lighting wasn't the best. This pre-quilting photo I took for Instagram shows it more clearly.

It was quilted in an all-over geometric pattern by Carol Fearon at Art Quilts in Onehunga. I love the way the shapes reflect the angles of the block patterns. Although part of me likes it for the bright solids and some of the blocks are great and I'm glad I did it, I'm still not a fan of the sampler quilt - they're just too busy and jarring to my eye. Luckily not everyone's like me and it's going to a friend who does like them!

If you're in Auckland come along to the exhibition at Alberton - not only do you get to see a bunch of nice quilts there's a fabulous old house to look through as well!

Crafting not blogging

I sometimes think I'm all talk and no action on the crafting front but I've been a busy bee for the last couple of weeks! Mostly I've been making Moda Modern Building Blocks blocks, but there's been some crocheting and other things too. I tend to put things up on Instagram these days and almost forget I have a blog, a trend I've noticed in others too! If you're on IG I'm Hazelnuts

After the solids I ordered online came I got stuck into the first of the 36" blocks. I knew it was big but hadn't realised exactly how big until I made my own. Amazingly it came out quite well considering all the seams on the bias and the fact I wasn't starching or anything.



In fact the pieces were so huge I couldn't use the 1/2 meters I had of a couple blues as they were literally 1/4" too small! I was pretty annoyed, but I don't mind the compromise I came up with too much. I did blocks 5 & 6 next to finish off that section, it's funny how an 18" block seems positively small after 36"!




Block 2 sucked, I really didn't enjoy it at all and the bias seams didn't go as well for some reason. Amazingly though, it sits fairly flat considering how awful I thought it would be and I think it will be fine after quilting. I also managed to sew several of the navy and light blue triangles wrong sides together, then I sewed a few with the navy on the left instead of the right and then realised that they all should have been that way but it doesn't really matter as long as they're consistent!



The rest of the Block 2 section is made up of 6 6" squares and I've done 4 of those so far. My favourite was 22, the orange and pink block, although it was definitely the fiddliest! I just love that colour combination.




Block 25

Moda Modern Blocks

Along with several people in my quilt group I'm going to be working on the Moda Modern Building Blocks quilt, a few blocks at a time, over 2015. It's quite a challenge for me on a couple of levels: firstly, I'm not a big fan of quilts with a variety of different blocks, they don't appeal to me aesthetically - to my mind they look random and jarring. That's just me I know, other people who I like and respect love that sort of carry-on so there's obviously something in it and because this one doesn't immediately offend me I'm going to dip my toes into the deadly seas of chaos. Secondly, I don't like all the colours used in the pattern so I'm going to have to choose quite a few for myself and to be honest, for me that way madness lies. I'm going to be doing a hell of a lot of second-guessing myself and over-thinking but I figure as long as they're all colours I like then it should be ok in the end.

I went through my stash to find solids and discovered that I don't have a lot and that my warm colours don't play well with my cool or some of the blues in the pattern so I'm going to have to buy a bunch to bulk out the warms and all of the cools. I've been such a good girl on my fabric diet for the last couple years and now look, I'm going to be kicking off 2015 by falling off the wagon. Let's hope it's not the start of a slippery slope! I'm going to make do with fewer fabrics than the pattern does, I think that might provide a bit more cohesiveness as well as being cheaper.  Here's what I have so far

Back sewing

I must admit to sewing burn-out after Hallowe'en and I wasn't at all upset when Mat banned me from the sewing machine for a couple weeks! To be honest, by the end there I wasn't having much fun, the low point being when I realised the reason I'd had such an awful time getting the collar on Mat's waistcoat to fit was because I'd put it in upside down - I must admit to a few tears at that point. I made that bastard fit though! I've eased back into non-fraught sewing with a couple blocks for the Monday Modern Xmas meeting.

The block is called Migration by Lynne Goldworthy and is in the Love Patchwork and Quilting magazine, issue 11 I think. It was fun to put together and I'm loving all the crisp points and lines. Next up is a churn dash block for last month's block lotto!

Wonky Stars in vintage sheet fabric

I just looked back through the archives and on the 17th of September 2012 I posted about making the initial sample block for this quilt to show the Monday Modern ladies what I wanted to do for my block, and I think I bound it at the beginning of August this year, so a speedy two years! No-one in their right mind would ever accuse me of being fast at this quilting biz.



It turned out pretty much like I was hoping it would which is nice, but I'm less sure about the batting I chose and the quilting. I should hasten to add that the quilting was done by Carol Fearon and it's superb, but I didn't really know what I wanted when I took it to her, it being the first time I've had one done professionally, and I think the fact I'm a bit unsure about it means that I DID actually have an idea in my head that I didn't communicate to her properly. I took along a picture of Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' and said something along these lines please and she interpreted it really well. I think in hindsight I might have been after more the wavy horizontal lines rather than the circles. But hey, live and learn and it really is quite amazing! I also wish I'd gone for a thinner cotton batting. I used a woollen one and it's too stiff and the quilt isn't particularly snuggly. Is that because the quilting is denser than quilts that I've done myself or is it the wool batting? Or both?

Anyways, I couldn't have done it without the Monday Modern girls (ladies? women? what's the right term here?) so a big thank you to them for doing the initial lot and then a few extra when I was despairing of ever getting done. I got there in the end!

Oh, and I like the back almost as much as the front :)

Oh, and two of the fabrics in the back were from dresses I had back in the 70s - guess which ones :) A hint, they're small because I was small.

Charity quilt

This has been a long time in coming but I finally handed it over to Helen last night. Several months ago she gave the Monday Modern group a bunch of fabric in FQs and asked us to make quilts for a charity she's involved with. I'd just seen some lovely 'low volume' quilts and wanted to try making one that didn't come across as pale and uninteresting. I don't normally just start making a quilt, it takes a lot of agonising and measuring and pondering, but with this one I just did it. I decided to sew the straight strips at a diagonal across a piece of muslin and then sew the bigger pieces together. I discovered that a FQ doesn't allow for much width when it's on an angle, and that different pieces were different widths. In the end the quilt was a little smaller than I wanted, but it would have meant another strip and then would have been a bit wide.

I discovered a few things with this quilt: firstly that I quite like low volume when it has a bit of colour in it, and I really like grey and white. Secondly, getting just the right amount of colour is very hard! I don't think any of the greens worked, the middle stripe because it is too much green and the green leaves because the background is a cream and there is too much green. The red Dutch fabric at the bottom of the middle panel is too much red, while the red just to the right of it is just right. Thirdly, sewing strips across the bias of a foundation fabric results in some distortion. I found the strips didn't always sit nice and flat, so I'm thinking perhaps it would have been better to just sew them together in a long strip and skip the foundation.

It was fun though, I enjoyed the process and liked the outcome. If I hadn't put in a few fabrics I wasn't 100% happy with it would have been hard to part with!

My new quilts on old beds

We set up the Monday Modern quilt exhibition at Highwic House this morning and it was a lot of fun - what a nice way to spend a sunny Sunday morning, lugging quilts all around a gorgeous old Victorian house and strewing them artistically on beds and chairs and any surface that wasn't already full of objects. Hazel came too and helped a little and enjoyed it so much she thanked me for letting her come.

The quilts looked so nice on the beds, and some of the locations were quite stunning. Pop over to the Monday Modern Flickr group to see some of the others' quilts, I've only posted my two here.

Being a perfectionist

Many (many) months ago it was my turn to have bee blocks made by the Monday Modern group.



It really is exciting to have them done for you, and they look great all together! The lovely ladies got me up half a Queen-sized quilt - and the rest are up to me! 

I'm finding the concept of 20-odd blocks a bit daunting! I'm not a fast sewer at the best of times, and envy those who are - I spend a lot of time visualising (which is free and can be done on the couch), then worrying, and planning, and working up to cutting and then cutting (which is the job I really loathe and put off), sewing and then it usually sits awhile while I work up to doing a back, then it sits awhile longer because I don't like quilting much on my little machine. See even my description of the quilting process is long and drawn out! So I've started back into the stars but I can't quite remember what my plan was for the bits I already have cut out so it's going to be slow getting back into it and then I'll have to do a bunch more cutting - I'll need to find the original tutorial I used to make up the instructions I handed out (if I can remember which one it was). The main problem though, is how SLOW this is going to be because I have to press each seam as I make it, and that slows things down big time. I'm better at not being totally perfect at things than I used to be, but I still require a certain standard from myself and I can't be slapdash. I don't think I'm being OCD or anything, I just wouldn't be happy if I knew I hadn't tried my hardest to do the best job I could. I don't care so much if the result isn't perfect, well ok just a little, more that I tried hard. Not pressing the first seam when making the individual points would be slacking off in my books. Why am I so hard on myself when I'm not on others? See I'm just using this blog as cheap therapy ;)

ETA: I came back to change how I worded this post, I don't know if anyone else thought it sounded a bit whiny and self-pitying, which I didn't intend at all, so hopefully now it reads more like I intended! Plus I've been working at not pressing that first seam today (with mixed results on the personal development front).

New Quilts for Old Beds

The Monday Modern quilt group is putting on an exhibition at Highwic House here in Auckland starting on the 18th. It's such a great pairing, an old house and new quilts, I think we're all pretty excited about it! It's nice and casual too, the quilts will be displayed on the beds and around the house, so along with the quilts you get to see all the other neat stuff at Highwic. Given my professional interest in the past, combined with my love of modern quilts, I'll probably be all overcome and stuff.

If you want to read more about it, here is the media release from Highwic. I have to admit that when I googled the exhibition I got kind of a rush to see that the first page was almost all about us! Now I suppose I'd better go and finish the binding on my offering...

Bee blocks

Only a week until I head off to Canada for a month! Can't wait. :) Before I go I'm hoping to get my scrappy trip around the world quilt done up for an exhibition the Monday Modern group is having in September. I need to find some time without Ollie around so I can get it all laid out and basted. However, that's time that's hard to come by! The thing about pugs is that they just want to be with you all. the. time. Allthetime. If he's not by my feet he's on them, or trying to be on them, or on my lap. I know they call some small dogs 'lap dogs' but they really aren't good on laps like cats are, Ollie is always slipping off or having trouble knowing where his legs and paws should go. Anyways, despite Ollie and packing I'm hopeful!

I had the last two bee blocks to finish up for the start of the month, I forgot to take photos of Heather's but here is Stacey's. She just wanted us to do a 12 1/2" block for her, our choice, from the four fabrics she supplied. I decided to have a look through Modern Blocks (the 99 blocks one) to see if anything took my fancy and ended up doing 'Stuck in the Middle'. I really liked it, quick and effective.



I've never really seen the appeal of the cross-hatched fabrics, though I know they're popular, but in a block like this I can see their advantage, they really conceal the seams well, as did the yellow dots although they show more in the photo. I thought that made the block even more effective, as the shapes really do look like they're set into each other.

Scrappy tripalong pillow

I realised when I came to parcel my swap items up that I tend to craft large, and if I ever do another swap I need to work on my small items! Kristel was much more savvy and sent a wonderful array of little things in a padded envelope, I sent a gigantic box. What actually took up the space and required a box were the two tin can lanterns we sent, but also this pillow case - no I didn't send the inner but it's quite bulky sewn up. I had some blocks left over from putting together my scrappy tripalong quilt top and coincidentally four of them were exactly the right size to make a pillowcase that fits what we call a Euro pillow (not sure what Europeans call that size...)

I came across the technique of quilting the scrappy tripalong blocks with a line either side of every second seam on Red Pepper Quilts, and it works really well. I also went diagonally to try and emphasise the diamond pattern which wasn't particularly obvious on just a cushion, partly because of the prints and also because one of the blocks was put together slightly wrong but it was a pillow by the time I figured it out. Can you spot where I stuffed up? It was backed with plain linen quilted with wavy lines. Hazel was very dismissive of that technique, felt it wasn't attractive and was appalled I was going to be sending it to poor Kristel who could not fail to be displeased. Children, they are so free with their opinions! I haven't had any complaints back btw ;) She liked the front though, and so do I. I'm not sure if I have enough blocks to do one for myself, not that they take a long time to make up or anything!

Talking about the Euro pillow makes me think of a topic I often wonder about - here in NZ, and in Canada from memory, furniture and other items are often advertised as "European design" or "Italian design" or "made in Germany" and all these terms are used to tell us that it's really stylish or that it's well-made, or both. So what I always wonder is how those items are advertised in those countries - do Europeans assume that things made there are stylish like we do here? Or that if it's made in Germany it won't fall apart in 2 weeks? Well actually that's usually true of the stuff that gets here, but I bet they make crap stuff too. Do Italians like to be told shoes are made with Italian leather? Drat, now I've got Ricardo Montalban saying "rich Corinthian leather" in my head, over and over again...

Bee blocks

This poor neglected blog, I feel bad! But I just haven't felt the desire to blog recently, not sure why. I think perhaps I'm just not finishing things the way I used to, and feeling like I don't have anything to blog and then getting anxious about not blogging so I don't blog and so it goes. I might try and see if I can break the vicious circle because I do actually have a few things to show off.

Doing bee blocks for our Monday Modern group really does let me finish things which is always a nice feeling!

The first two I did were for Louise, out of this delightfully gothic fabric by Tula Pink. I don't know that I'd want a whole quilt out of it but it was fun doing two blocks! That's the best thing about bee blocks I think, you can just love something on a superficial level without committing to a whole quilt. The block itself was also great - big and easy and very effective when put together with the others. I gather it's also Tula Pink.





The second lot of blocks were for Cris, and she gave us a pile of solid strips and told us to go for it, keeping a log cabin in mind.



This was a lot of fun to put together. The first one was pretty straight-forward, and I kept it fairly traditional. There was quite a lot of fabric left over so I thought I'd just make another one, but ran out of long enough pieces towards the end. But I liked the pieced strip I made for one side, in a desperate attempt to finish it. It wasn't quite enough though, so I had to add a couple of strips out of my stash to get it to size. My husband wasn't at all sure why I was doing that "just give it to her like that" he said, but I really wanted to finish it for me! Which probably says a lot about why we all do blocks - not necessarily out of the goodness of our hearts but because we like the challenge and playing with other people's fabrics - all fun care and no responsibility!

I'm determined to get out another post in a few days, so check back soon!

Scrappy Tripalong top finished

Oh my god being a puppy-mummy is hard work! Getting easier but still, not a lot of time for sewing because if Ollie doesn't need attention then Hazel does! It's going to be much easier when she goes back to school on Tuesday, but also a bit lonely. She's really looking forward to it though, starting Year 3, up to the Middle school, new room, new teacher, and a couple of good friends to keep her company.

I finished up the Scrappy Tripalong quilt top last night. It had stalled a bit when I discovered that at least two of the blocks were too small in one dimension to be used so I decided it would be better to just make a few more and use them than try and sort out the old blocks and made 8 more. As it turned out (of course), it was just the two blocks I'd initially identified that were a problem, so I have 8 more blocks to do something with! Hazel has asked to have this so there's no point in adding more to the quilt for a single bed. It's not perfect, there are some seams with a big of a jag between blocks, but it's so busy you can't really tell. I think the problem was one particular fabric that must have been on more of the bias than I realised, and has stretched a bit. I'm really picky about cutting on the bias but with vintage sheets it can be quite hard at times as they are cheaply made, and sometimes super-wonky - the weave doesn't run perpendicular to the selvedge, or even straight across in many cases, so sometimes I just had to say "f**k it" and cut however.

I enjoyed making it, now I just have to make myself keep going and get it quilted. Not sure how well my machine will cope with it, it's the biggest thing I've made so far. I know I can do a smaller single but this might just be a bit too big for the throat of the machine. Very simple quilting ahoy! Of course I had some help with taking the photos...

It's hard to get the colours to show up properly, it always seems to look darker than it really is. It's quite light and bright actually, more the top of the big photo than towards the bottom (which is probably a bit in the shade).

Feeling creative again

I don't know what it is about the Christmas period but I totally lose any desire to be creative. This year it was compounded by the most disgusting hot, humid, rainy weather ever, bar none. And a sprained ankle. I actually thought sitting on the couch for hours on end with it up on pillows would be a crafting godsend, but all I did really was read and play on my phone. But the ankle is much better, so is the weather, and I got caught by this Scrappy Tripalong that started up on Instagram. I'd seen this tag pop up a few times in the last few days but didn't really twig to it until I read a couple blog posts. I thought "ahhhh...so that's what it is" and then I thought "nah, not really my thing" and then after I had a look at the hashtag album I thought "hmmm...I quite like some of these..." and then I thought "but I don't have any scraps large enough" and then about half an hour later I thought "but actually I have all those old sheets" and then an hour or so after that I thought "and they'd look pretty good, maybe I'll just have a look at them" and the next thing I knew I was cutting out vast numbers of strips and telling my husband I was making "a thing for the thing - you know". I think my brain must have been having a break at that point, but he found it amusing so now the project is "The Thing" in our house.

The Tripalong is based around the tutorial over at Quiltville, and it's super super simple. I'm not the most accurate piecer in the world but damn if my seams aren't matching and everything sits nice and flat! I'm also trying out pressing my seams to one side as per the tutorial. I usually press open but thought perhaps this would eliminate some of the bulk at the seam intersections. I guess I'd have to do one pressed open to compare but it does seem to help. I still don't like the way the seams sit though, you just can't get them as flat as you can when they're pressed open.

So here are my six blocks put together. I have strips for another 10 blocks sorted out, and probably enough strips for another 10 cut, although I may have to cut more of some colours. The trick is to have light and dark strips, and for my fabrics, also contrasting colours. I think having one bright colour per block will be essential, and also making sure there is one strip of blue. Blue really seems to stand out the most for some reason.