some more 15 minutes

I've been trying to find my 15 minutes at least a couple of times a week. Here's my latest wonky log cabin grab-the-next-fabric scrapy quilt blocks.

I tried one with just bold solids, one mono cromatic, one all browns and one totally random. Looking at them here, that one could do with some more added to it.

The bottom right is all from scraps given to me by a lady on a thrifty sewing forum. They don't really go too well together but I thought it would be nice to have a 'Sarah' block in this quilt. I might try this with other bits of fabric, so I'll have a 'mum' block, an 'Emma' block ect...

perfect = panick // play = productive!

I really want to follow a pattern from a magazine to make a cushion for my fiance for Xmas. The problem is it includes some 'friendship stars', and I've only successfully done half square triangles once, 15 yrs ago, when I was 15! Fear of Failure has meant that after a month of repeatidly looking at the instructions, I still haven't got anywhere.

So I decided I'd put the lessons from 15 Minutes Play into practice, and PLAY at making a friendship star block. Just some leftover scraps of fabric, 15 minutes and the knowledge that it was not for the cushion.

Ok, my points don't really match up with the centre square, and it is very wonkey, but I like it and I think I know what I need to do to make the ones for the cushion meet up better (uniform seam allowance i think!). Humm, maybe it's the first block in a new scrappy quilt?

Welcome Gnome

Last month Andrea Zuill, aka BadBird posted an embroidery competiton on her blog: zuill.us/andreablog. The only rule was to use one of her free patterns.

Delighted with the excuse to do some hand embroidery, I quickly whipped up her Gnome pattern, adding my own text. I'd just packed my fiance off to deepest darkest rural Romania for two weeks, so "Welcome Gnome" seemed quite appropriate!

But I knew I wanted to 'do more' to it, so I grabbed my hexagon project scraps and pieced the borders. They mostly remind me of a loved one or a loved place, so add to the sentiment for me. They weren't all 2" square, so I was amazed that the corners (almost) met perfectly! Then with the full on PLAY spirit of 15 Minutes, I began to machine quilt it. This is not a skill I have mastered yet. I'm OK when it doesnt matter where the lines go, but, well, promise me you won't look too closely! To complete it, a kind friend donated the binding; a pair of old trousers!

So although I intended to enter it in an embroidery competition, I approached the quilt bit with the idea to Play. It didnt matter if it went 'wrong', because there was no pre-defined 'right'. It was good to practice some techniques and most importantly, I had fun!

My 2nd, 3rd, 4th.... 15 Minutes

Encouraged by the oddly liberated feeling of satisfaction gained from my hexagon-based First 15 Minutes (http://www.15minutesplay.com/2010/09/my-first-15-minutes.html), and feeling inspired and spurred on by your comments and the other posts here, I began playing with actual quilt blocks.

So I grabbed my scraps tin, and two lots of 15 minutes later and I had these:

There was no planning, no measuring, no real thought as to colour choice, just simply using the next bit that was more or less the right length. To be honest, I was amazed that they actually look like real quilt blocks!

As the week went on, I got adventerous and used some very small scraps as centres, and made some with colour themes. I hope whilst playing that I will learn something about tone and value. (Can you tell I've quite a bit of that stripy cotton? I think I'll hide the rest of that piece for a while.)

I think they are wonky log cabins (well they certainly are wonky!). They still need trimming, I think I'm aiming for 5" finished blocks, and they definatly need pressing, but with 15 minutes every day or so, I now have 12 random, scrappy quilt blocks!

My first 15 minutes

Hello everyone, I'm Cate. Please bare with me, this is my first blog post anywhere ever, and it's about my first 15 minutes play. So if this comes out all wrong, I'm sorry.

I started out so inspired by the 15 Minute concept. Then was thwarted by gift deadlines, a grumpy sewing machine, and the need to organise my stash before I could acutally find what I wanted within an hour, let alone those precious 15 minutes!

With our men-folk loudly killing deamons in the next room, us girls found ourselves confined to the living room. So I sat back on the sofa, grabbed some scraps, and made mini 1/2 inch hexagons, for no reason at all. Well, they are cute, and they used up some impossibly small scraps. I'm currently working on a 1" hexagon quilt, so these serve no pre-defined purpose. Perhaps I had more fun knowing I had no goal - the colours didn't matter, and the blurgh-ness of some of the fabrics was irrelevant. All I had to do was enjoy the process. And I did.

If anyone has any ideas for a small but growing pile of 1/2" hexies, I'd love to hear them!

(Oh, and inspired by a friend's pin cushion, I grabbed my felt stash and made my own, in less than 15 minutes!)