A couple more ticks off the to do list

This month I struggled to get around to the Garden BOM quilt block designed by Janeen van Niekirk of Quilt Art Designs.  I don't know if it was the infinite pieces involved or the color choices or the fact that it featured a cat but it was a struggle to want to put it together.  After waiting to see what others might have done and seeing no one else's block appear in Flickr I decided to give it a go.

After taking the photo of my finished block and looking at it, I see a couple of boo boos but they are there to stay.  I am just too bogged down on Christmas commitments to fix it and let's face it these are complicated blocks...no matter how much they love to say... they are intermediate blocks...they are a lot of dang hard work and time.  Janeen did say this month's was a intermediate hard block!  Paper pieced blocks are without a doubt a major pain in the booty to rip apart and put back together.  Having stitched them all together with short stitches alone makes it intolerable to take apart and ...hey it took me hours to notice the messed up pieces so I can live with it...right?

The left hand side of the bench by the cat's paw has a couple of pieces that I should have had different colors in.  Both of which are probably on the outside edge of their respectful sections and could be more easily fixed than some errors but I just don't want to.  I can already hear that nagging voice in my head telling me to fix the errors.  The piece under the bench should have been flowers not the dark edge of the bench and it looks like I added another dark piece to the bench itself next to the cat's front paw that should have been the lighter wood.  But hey the cat turned out alright.  Who is going to focus on the bench besides me???  Actually as I am looking at that area look at how that dark rusty patch on the cat's arm looks like it should have been part of the bench, too.  Yikes!!! Not even my cat is right...I have to either ignore it or put on my Big Girl Panties and deal with it. Going to ignore it for now.

Janeen used a different approach to showing us the pieces this month and it involved having each section colored in a different color and I struggled with it big time.  Plus some of the pictures were rectangles instead of squares and it was difficult to find each shape as it was distorted in the picture. Maybe my cat broke it's arm and fell asleep.  Janeen had a great picture of the block and I should have only focused on that one view but I always like seeing the picture with the numbers and letters on it to find which color goes where on my pieces.  Oh, well for now I am going to just be glad I got it this far along (done???)

Earlier in the week I did have some success with this block of Elsa designed by Jessica Lee Blacknall from Sew Much Mishief.  She has designed all the frozen characters and has them available for free on her blog and her Craftsy pattern site.  If you are interested definitely check out her blog as she has some great free patterns available.  I am going to be making three of the Elsa blocks and turning them into throw pillows for the grand-daughters for Christmas.  I'd love to make an Anna one, too or maybe Olaf but each grand-daughter wants Elsa.

I enlarged her block 130% and it is now a 13 1/2 inch block.  I am wanting to make an 18" pillow cushion cover so I think by adding a border around it it will be perfect!

Keep Stitchin'