Final F2F Blocks Arrive and Virtual Quilt is Made

The last of my 36 blocks from the F2F block swap have arrived. With twelve participants in Australia, the United States and Europe, each sending three blocks off to one of the others every month, there’s a lot of room for mishaps concerning the various postal services.  Due to a mix up with my postcode, two parcels went missing for a while.  The weeks went by, then Avis in the U.K. got her parcel ‘returned to sender’ and  re-directed it back to me but the package from Annett in Germany seemed to be a lost cause.  Until it wasn’t!  It too turned up with the postcode having been changed to the correct one – presumably by somebody in France – but then sent back to her instead of to me.  A bit bizarre but a happy result anyway.  Just look at the lovely blocks that could have been lost forever.

Annett managed to find some of the bird fabric that I had originally used for the inspiration for my colours.  Due to my fabric fast, I wasn’t able to buy any myself but now I have some in two of the blocks she sent me.

It was the turquoise and flashes of pinky coral against the pale and dark greys that inspired me to make the colour choice for my eventual quilt.

This one is my favourite.  I love the way Annett centred the two birds and the surrounding fabrics are just lovely.  I believe this is called a pineapple block but correct me if I’m wrong.  I thought this had been paper pieced but Annett has said she didn’t use that method.   I must try some paper piecing this year although it does look fiddly and I don’t generally ‘do’ fiddly.

In the likely event that I will take forever and a day to actually piece the blocks and then quilt them, I have amused myself by making a collage of (nearly) all the blocks as if they were together in a quilt.  I hope the other participants will forgive me if you notice one of your blocks missing but I only used the photos I was able to crop to a neat(ish) square.  It doesn’t mean the missing block won’t be in the final quilt – I intend to use each and every one.

Mock Up F2F Quilt

It will actually be longer than it is wide when I put it together and I haven’t decided what colour to do the sashing yet but what do you think?  I really love the colours and the blocks are so gorgeous.

I am busy making my three blocks for Emmely who is ‘Miss January’ as far as receiving blocks is concerned and she has asked for green which I don’t normally use and, as I can’t buy any fabric at the moment, I’ve had to be very inventive with my scrap bag.  This swap has really got me enthusiastic about patchwork again and I’ve been trying hard to be more accurate and adventurous.  I’m not giving up making clothes entirely but I will be more fussy about what I make in the future.  I have so many clothes and not many opportunities to wear a lot of them in rural France so I have to rein it in a bit.  I think 2016 will see less dressmaking and  more patchwork and knitting but that could change once I can buy fabric again!!