A couple of blocks

The last week was every bit as tiring as I thought it would be - in fact I'm still tired, I left work at 4 p.m. today because I couldn't concentrate at all. Might be something to do with waking up at 2 a.m. unable to sleep. When I wake up in the night, I get up, no sense in lying there tossing and turning. I wish I could feel like sewing in the middle of the night - just think of all I'd be able to get done. But I can't, so I do a crossword or watch the 24 hour news channel, then I go back to bed when I'm finally feeling sleepy.

Haven't even had the energy to sew much. I did do a couple of blocks as try-outs for my next project(s). The lilac and green star is this one that I saw on Keryn Emmerson's blog, Quilting Twin - she had done them in pinks and greens but it really caught my eye because I was looking for a pattern to make up a queen-sized quilt for my bed and I've got lots of scrappy lilacs, greens and creams. As Keryn showed, you can make the block look really different by varying the placement of colours. We just bought a new bed from that great British institution, Marks and Spencer's (now known rather more uninterestingly as M&S) and I wanted to redecorate the bedroom in shades of lilac. You may have spotted the 'oops' in this practice block so I'll have to be careful when I make more - but I'm not going to unpick it and it will go into the finished quilt - it'll get lost once there are a few more blocks together. I think this must be a sign that I'm getting older - when I was younger I probably would have had to unpick it - nothing less than perfection would have done - now I'm a bit more laissez faire.

The other block is a bit different - I'm looking for a pattern that will show off all the shirting plaids that I've accumulated, this is a variation of Scrapbagger, from Quilter's Cache but I'm not quite sure about it. I think I need to make up a few more blocks to see what the overall effect is like.

Have a good week, everyone.