Essential sewing tool - a camera!

I don't know what it is about the process of making but sometimes you can get tunnel vision in trying to complete a block and when this happens, somehow, I just can't seem to see what is right in front of me. It's only when I go to upload a photo for the blog, that I properly see what I've made.  Sometimes it works our brilliantly and I get perfect points;

but most of the time its because I've gone and done something daft like this:

For the second time last week, I managed to piece some green triangles in the wrong way around!  I didn't notice I had one of the star points made into a mountain instead of a star in this Stash Bee block until I was writing my stash bee post.  It was a case of run to the hall table, take back the parcel, rip it open and start unpicking again!

Of course when I ripped it apart I poked a hole in the white with my seam ripper and had to re-cut and re-sew quite a bit of the block!  Doh!  That's what I get for rushing.

My camera came in really handy on Saturday too as I was out in the Limerick Quilt Centre buying fabric for Yvonne's Snowflake Shimmer Quilt-A-Long.  I wanted a subtle kind of a snowflake quilt so was going for bright white, a frosty blue and a warm grey.  I thought Kona Ash might be too dark so picked shadow and blueberry.

The shop didn't have these but did have Lake and Silver.  In the shop light Silver looked ok but in B&W on the back of the camera it looked far too similar to work.

So its back to the Shadow again!  The QAL has just started and its fabric selection in the first week so I have to get some ordered!  And the silver?  I have plans for that for another Christmas type quilt ... and I may yet go with Ash.  Decisions, decisions.

So after all that fabric selection and unpicking of green HST's it was nice to have a random improv style block to make for Stash Bee July!

This HST block is made by randomly selecting squares, making HST, putting them in a bag (I used a big Ikea basket bag to make sure I didn't peek!), randomly pulling HST out and sewing them together - only rule was one of the triangles had to have a pop of colour suitable for a boys quilt.  I picked green - I was on a roll at that point with green, right?  This block is impossible to sew things in upside down, well you can but it doesn't matter!

Thankfully it wasn't all unpicking for me with this one -back to perfect points - at least in the centre section anyway!  Taking the small victories when they come.

Wilbur on the other hand had enough of me messing about with the camera and the seam ripper!   It might look like he was keeping me company while catching up with Stash Bee but no, he strategically placed himself between my machine and the ironing board and had a great chat with me,  telling me, via whistles, whines and Mutley mutterings it was time for a break and our evening walk!  He also woke me up yesterday morning before 7 to go outside and get his morning tablet for epilepsy (with Philadephia cream cheese!)  Better than an alarm clock. No snooze button though ...