I've been busy this week, but that doesn't necessarily mean I've been wholly successful! I have completed all 20 12" blocks for my scrappy crazy quilt. This has diminished my pile of scraps, but I seem to have just as many scraps, but smaller ones.  I have also completed all the ruler quilting on the Amanda Murphy Celestial Lights panel, designed to learn to use her oval ruler set.  Let's just say more practice is needed; it's not work I'm proud of, but I did learn from it.  I did a fair amount of unpicking but soon realised that if I continued to do that, I would never get it done, so I left a lot of rather, um, rough work. I will add more quilting, but free motion this time. I also regret using 50wt Aurifil. I think 40wt would have looked better.  The 50wt is a bit 'weedy' somehow. I intend to cut this panel up and make a bag of some description from it, just so that it's not wasted.

The front of the panel. The quilting doesn't show up very clearly.

The back of the panel. It looks grey, but it's actually a medium blue with a metallic sheen. This was the most difficult motif to quilt, I found. I couldn't see where the directions were going, but once it was stitched, I could see it and wished I could do it over.

This was one of the first sections to be quilted; rather wobbly in places. 

I found it really tricky to prevent the ruler from slipping, even though these rulers have a patented non-slip backing. Quilting around the outside of the rulers was more difficult than the inside and tracking over previous stitching was difficult to get accurate, when I am not bad at that free motion, usually. I think it may have something to do with having to quilt with the specified rulers and follow the marked alignment points, when fabric isn't always printed absolutely accurately and, of course, it moves when stitched, even when it's been stitched in the ditch, well in make-believe ditches.  However, there are no tucks in the backing, so that's something. 

I plan to quilt the crazy quilt using a combination of rulers. I have just bought the Amanda Murphy 'Every Circle' set, so I'll use that, but I'll add in other rulers as well, I am amassing a collection. The blocks are composed of strips and wedges around a five-sided centre, which often ended up well off-centre, but this quilt will get donated to my cats when finished. Fortunately, they are not too fussy about the quilting, as long as the quilt is soft, warm and comfy.

A few of the crazy blocks. I shall be a bit more careful about how I arrange them. They are not pretty, but they will serve a purpose. Onto the pretty stuff next.

When the crazy is done, it will be on to The Carpenter's Wife. The fabric is burning a hole in the project bag at present. I do also have Philippa Naylor's 'Happy Heart' to make as well. I have the fabric for this and have begun cutting it. This lesson 6 (or 7) in her Quilter's Question Time online course and the subject is curved piecing. I am learning to be more precise from her excellent teaching.

I see Bernina has just released a Q16, as an affordable option that doesn't take up quite as much space. They continue to tempt me.

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