This is What Falling Off the Wagon Looks like or Sunday Stash

Yep, either these fell off the back of a truck or I fell off the wagon. See, I'm not supposed to be buying fabric. Who says? Well me, my mom and Making Rebecca Lynne at the Fabriholics Anonymous Group on Flickr.



What had happened was... :) I was testing a quilt pattern for Blossom Heart Quilts and I started pulling fabrics. I kept pulling out these really minty aquas. It looked like I had almost enough to not repeat any fabrics. Almost. So the next time I happened to be in front of the fabric store I parked and went and got some, just two. It's actually a little hard to find very minty aquas. Then since I'm making a cream and red block for myself for the Stash Fabulous Bee I probably needed some more creams.



Low volume and creams are good blenders right? And this one is a Christmas fabric so it was on super sale. And it has a metallic shimmer.



Mmm, gold. So here they are, my beautiful walk of fabri-shame and stash guilt. Know why? I ended up having enough minty aqua already in my stash for there to be no repeats. Now I have extra aqua for no good reason. Except maybe scraps and goodies for swaps.

The cream crosshatch I sent off for background fabric for the Stash Fab Bee and the text/sew fabric I've been using as background on my pattern test animal blocks for Juliet at Tartankiwi (also on major sale). So, very necessary that :) And they do all look nice together.


Happy Stash and Sunday to You! Linking up to Molli Sparkles Sunday Stash.

Badger Paper Piece Quilt Block

The nice big post about paper piecing and pattern testing for Tartankiwi seems to have gone the way of the world. It's hiding from me. In the mean time this badger is a paper pieced pattern that I tested a while ago.

If you get the chance to do pattern testing for someone I would recommend it. I have become a better paper piecer for having done it. While I had done some paper piecing before it was more along the lines of compass or mariners blocks. Those are fairly straight forward and all of the sections are exactly the same. Blocks like the flying geese circle or intricate ones were out of my comfort zone and seemed too difficult and intricate for me. I was intimidated by them and hesitated even trying to sew them. Testing for Tartankiwi made all the difference for me.

One day I saw on her blog a call for people to test her patterns. If there's one thing I had learned about paper piecing its that if you can sew on a line, you can make a block. So I volunteered myself. I like to stretch my boundaries and learn new things. It feels great having conquered something that seemed really hard or impossible.

By the time I tested this pattern I felt 100 % capable to sew it up with no problems or hesitation. It is a straight forward and easy block to sew up and I think he is so charming. I totally fell for him while I was sewing him together. I'd like to introduce you to him. Here's Boris the Badger.



If you'd like to make one, head on over to Tartankiwi.

Linking up to Quiet Play's paper piece Friday.