An unintended break because Summer was finally here, for at least a whole week! I enjoyed every single minute of it!

Some weeks ago Mr DC had eye surgery and was at home, not being allowed to work and/or drive.  I’ve been his chauffeur, guiding him to the Eye hospital for check ups and to his office and appointments. He really hates it when he‘s not allowed to drive. After some discussion he surrendered and we had some lazy days. He was in need of some rest anyway, having worked overtime during a business trip to China, prior to his eye surgery. The Chinese people work hard, very, very hard and the temperatures in China were high, very, very high.

Mr DC’s eye is healed and his eye sight has improved so he is back at the office again. I however, stayed lazy and watched the Olympic Games, week 1. We only have one hour time difference with London, so I’m glued to the TV all day while I have my own Olympic English Paper Piecing Games.

I made a lot of progress on my Japanese Hexagon quilt, finished the front of a pillow cover and even started a new project from the book by Brigitte Giblin, Feathering the Nest (pictures soon!). A beautiful book, I love classic designs with a modern twist. Brigitte often uses the EPP technique and has a great eye for colour and shape. She is an Australia based quilter, but originally comes from France. Her quilts show the best of both worlds.

I’ve also been working on some bee blocks.

Free Bee block for June for Lynne based upon and inspired by the film Schindler‘s List.

Free Bee block for July for Stacey inspired by the work of Rosie Lee Tompkins. All made of shot cottons. It looks complicated, but it really isn’t, it’s just a matter of cutting fabric strips, sewing them together, cutting and sewing again and so on and so forth in a log cabin style. The block is 15″ squarish, so Stacey will be able to cut it down to the size she wants. It’s hard to take a good photo of shot cottons.

Blocks for do. Good Stitches, Cherish circle, August. Merran asked for Snail Trail blocks (or whatever they are called) in aqua and grey. This was my second attempt, the first two blocks looked like this:

Those snails are tangled in their own houses! They got my mind boggled. A case of reading a tutorial too quick, so I unpicked them and started all over again. You can find a tutorial for the blocks here.

Some weeks ago I won a sponsored give-away over at Katy’s blog Imagingermonkey, a lucky rainbow stash from Backstitch, a UK based online shop. Thanks again Katy and Alice (Backstitch)! I love all the fabrics and colours!

Happy days to you all, I hope to be back on Wednesday August 15th, with the reveal of my Tangled Textiles challenge quilt about Architecture!

Let me tell you, this one is driving me crazy! I came up with the theme, but it makes it even harder to decide what to make and how to. I started with buildings, my hometown skyline and lots of other ideas, blueprints, landscape architecture and made complicated and simple drawings to finally choose something completely different… Phew. Only 10 days left to work on the quilt and I hope I succeed!

Nicolette