French nine-patch finished and 500 quilt blocks fun

In my summer December vacation, I finally had some dedicated time for quilting again. I managed to finish basting and quilting my French Nine-patch quilt top, made with a couple of different Moda French General charm packs.

I backed the quilt with some Moda 3 Sisters Paris Flea Market fabric that was on sale from Hancocks of Paducah (my favourite online store, their prices, shipping costs and customer service are unbeatable). I did simple stitch-in-the-ditch quilting only on the large patches, which has made the quilt nice and soft.

I recently bought a fantastic little quilting book (at the university academic book store?!) called 500 Quilt Blocks by British authors Lynne Goldsworthy (http://lilysquilts.blogspot.com/) and Kerry Green (http://verykerryberry.blogspot.com/). This a fantastic book with excellent instructions and beautiful examples using modern and vintage fabrics. 

I find this book very inspiring and I would like to make a sampler quilt with my Kaffe Fassett fabric stash sometime soon. At the moment I'm playing around with Granny Squares block from their book with my small floral prints fabric stash.

Of course Sweety-Bird is assisting me: by pulling out all my pins and throwing it on the floor, and using the cotton reels as toys...

French nine-patch quilt top finished

I finished sewing the French nine-patch quilt top yesterday. I'm not going to quilt this one myself, I'll have to get some quotes from the professionals. In the meantime, I'm going to make another pieced quilt top with all the leftover lighter coloured charm squares, I'm busy deciding on the pattern now.

French nine-patch quilt progress

I finished making 120 5"x5" nine-patch blocks, and started playing with the French General charm pack squares for the layout for my French nine-patch quilt. I purchased 5 Moda French General charm packs in total: 2 x La Belle Fleur; 1 x Le Petite Odile; 1 x Château Rouge; 1 x Esprit de Noel. I only used the darker background squares. The nine-patches were made from half-yard pieces from the La Belle Fleur and Chateau Rouge ranges.

I am about half-way with assembling the quilt-top now :)

I also managed to start knitting a cardigan. I chose a simple Kaffe Fassett motive from his Pattern Library book.