A lovely prize I won and Picadilly to the Nines

Earlier this summer Lia hosted a Secret Tote Bag Swap and I decided to join in the fun. And fun it was! I made a lovely tote bag for my partner and I received a lovely tote bag from another quilter. In addition there were a bunch of prizes to be won and lucky me won one of them! My prize was a custom made tote bag made especially for me by Lia! The colours are just gorgeous and the bag has outer pockets, a zip closure and a lovely lining.

She did a fantastic job of this bag and I am thrilled with it! Inside the bag were a couple of little treats....a Toblerone Bar (delicious) and a Bunny Hill pincushion pattern). 

Lia is organizing another Secret Tote Bag Swap and the sign up will be in a few days. If you've never participated in a swap this is a fun one!

Basting and stitching the diamonds for the border of my quilt "81" is an evening job so while that is going on I can go back to working on a quilt top, Picadilly to the Nines! This is a quilt that is made of mostly nine patch blocks and variations thereof. I make 3" finished nine patches with scraps and I use them as leaders and enders when I'm sewing. This means I've always got a good pile of nine patches available.

Picadilly to the Nines was inspired by some nine patch variation blocks in my stash. One of the fabrics in those blocks is Picadilly by Free Spirit. I love it and use it sparingly. It is a lovely lime-olive ground with bits of yellow, black, soft turquoise and pale blue.

The other fabric in the blocks is a stripe fabric from Northcott. It is a brighter green with bits of olive and gold. I love working with stripes and directional prints because they can be used to great advantage in blocks.

These two fabrics aren't a perfect match but the originals were made with scraps and when I'm working with scraps I play around and these two fabrics worked together. One of the reasons I think that this is so is because the colours do not bleed into on another. They do have some commonalities and so they do work well together. And I'm only using small bits because the finished block is 3".

And here are three of the 3" blocks from my stash that were the beginning of the quilt top!

I had limited stash of the inspiration blocks but I liked them so much that I decided to make more with the two fabrics. Notice that the Northcott striped fabric is used in the same position in each block. Since the first blocks were made with scraps there are two different backgrounds in each. That was because I was just using the scraps I had on hand. If I had the enough of the right size scraps for the background it would be the same but if I didn't then there would be two different backgrounds and I quite like the effect of different fabrics!

Tomorrow I'll show you how I made these little blocks. They are fun and fast so if you want to give it a go, look for a piece of striped fabric in your stash and we'll have some nine patch fun!

Until I post again, happy sewing!