Locking, locking

No blogging from me for over a week, because every time I turned my laptop on, I got about 30 seconds and then the screen would tell me it was locking.  It's pretty tricky to fix something if you can only do it in 30 second bursts.   Funnily enough my car charger went on the blink at the same time.  Turns out the way to fix that is to turn off the power, unplug the ethernet cable, wait 5 minutes and plug it all back in.  Sound familiar?

Anyhow, just as inexplicably as it started to play up, the laptop has now decided to behave, so here I am again. Turns out I've been doing plenty of sewing, though I can't quite remember how it all went, so here are a few photos, probably in the right order, to bring things up to date.

So far, so good.  

Looking at things from more than one angle

This is progressing ok, I think.  I added the blunt triangles to both sides of my favourite block

and then to both ends.

Since then I have made more long rectangles and more blunt triangles, just accumulating bits really.  

I added extra triangles, at the bottom just because I like them and at the top because it made the long pieces fit better.

And a little band of the gold-y fabric.  Then I put it away.  When I got it out again this morning, it landed on the floor the "wrong" way round and guess what?  I think maybe I prefer it like this.

That's a bit of a surprise, but I am rolling with it for now. 

Long rectangles, blunt triangles, a possible way forward

The sun is shining and I am mostly in the garden.  I am sewing a bit though, as a respite from the weeds.

I am trying out a few more blocks similar to the rectangle I liked last time. 

These are all made from shirt arms; their size is dictated purely by the size of the fabric.  It results in slightly bigger pieces than I tend to,which is not a bad thing.  I'm sure given enough time I'll figure out a way to incorporate some little bits.

While these were in their box I mulled over all sorts of possible directions for them, some complicated, some less so.  For now I am just trying this.

My thinking was that the blunt-nosed triangles would belong with the block on the left, but looking at this picture I don't like that as much as I did this morning.  I can, however, see a way forward, so all is good.

Warming up

Starting a new quilt is a bit like getting ready for a run (though I don't run - dodgy knee).  I can't just sprint straight off from the front door, I have to do a bit of bending and stretching, cutting, tinkering and looking before I get properly underway.  

This time round I don't have any idea of where I want to head, so I have started by cutting some simple shapes and seeing how they feel.  

I wondered if I might make some nine patches, so I cut some squares.

The strong colours in this plaid might make this tricky to get right.  I'm not saying I won't, but cutting these few squares made me think twice, at least.

Then I thought, maybe another Coins variation.  These two fabrics sit nicely together.

Then, for some reason, largely to do with dropping one piece on top of another and liking what I saw, I made this.

This last piece is my favourite so far, but mostly I'm just figuring out how the different stripes and plaids relate to each other.  Some, all or none of these may end up in the quilt, but they are mostly biggish pieces so if I don't keep them as they are, it won't be too wasteful to find new configurations for them.