Striking solid stripes

The Love circle blocks this month are kind of cool, and huge! Rachel wrote up a tutorial for these striking stripey blocks made using foundation paper piecing that end up a whopping 15" x 24". She asked for all solids in a mixture of grays, dusty blues, a variety of aquas, citron yellow, and medium pink. 

I don't have much in the way of solids in my stash. I have a good chunk of white and linen, but other than that it's sort of whatever little scraps I have left from previous projects. Soooo I went out and bought a few quarter yards to combine with those scraps. The colors here are Kona candy blue, pomegranate, and gray, a tone-on-tone white I had strips of already, and that interesting yellow/green from Mom's sewing machine cover I've been using the remainders of lately. 

To get a big enough piece of paper to chop up, I figured rather than piece together printer paper I'd be clever. I pulled out my roll of freezer paper. Hilariously as soon as I started ironing I realized why Rachel hadn't come out and suggested it -- it sticks to the ironing board! Duh. It actually wasn't at all bad. It peeled off easily and left no stickiness behind. As a bonus it stabilized the pieces and prevented wonkiness of the template paper while I was pressing. (Thankfully I was pressing on the 'paper side' so I didn't gunk up my iron.) The only thing was it was a little bit tacky on the sewing machine when feeding it through, but barely. Silly me, though. 

It has been a while since I've had the mental space to want to turn on music and sew. Sewing had become my time to quietly let my mind wander and decompress. Feeling particularly relaxed today after a morning of riding and afternoon coffee with 'the girls', I turned on some older music I haven't listened to in a while (ahem, R.E.M Automatic for the People) and went to town. I'm taking advantage of these next couple months before I start my new position to relax, ride, and enjoy myself. Check! This was an enjoyable block to make.

It feels a little bit nautical to me, probably because it's basically primary colors with their fancy clothes on. I'm looking forward to seeing the whole quilt top with all the other colors. Of course, I always look forward to that part.