Proper WIP :D

I first blogged about making this quilt a couple of weeks ago - at that point I queried whether it was an actual WIP or just an IIMH (my new acronym - idea in my head!) Well, after all my selecting, measuring, cutting, piecing and head-scratching this week ... I do believe this definitely now qualifies as a 'proper work in progress' :)

In case you don't want to visit my previous post, this is the quilt I'm making from the Jelly Roll I won from the lovely Carla:

The pattern, 'Stormy Weather' features in this book, by the very talented mother and daughter team, Pam and Nicky Lintott and, whilst it was a slow start, I'm now on a (jelly!) roll! (note to self: must not laugh out loud at own jokes!): 

Because my Jelly Roll isn't predominantly one colour as in the pattern, I did experience a little 'too much choice-anxiety' and umm'ed and ah'ed for ages at separating the strips but, eventually, I put on my big-girl's pants and just got on with it:

Took a while to sew the 48 x 4-patch blocks but thank goodness for chain-piecing:

Once all 48 units were made, I started to trim them down to 4 1/2" even though I'm not sure they needed it. Trouble is, once I started, I couldn't stop and when you look at the little pile of trimmings at the end of it, I don't know whether I'd bother in the future. Would you:

Then on to the tricky bit :( The pattern calls for using one of these triangle rulers which I don't have (much to DH's surprise, "I thought you had every quilting contraption on the market!") Hmmm ... obviously not my dear:

Tried being clever and cut out the first 2 triangles without measuring and I realised after sewing them together, it was too small - 4 of these were not going to amount to a 4 1/2" finished square in a square. But, I'm no quitter so I practised different angles and sizes by cutting on scraps but it just wasn't working  ... this was going to be easy. I knew some clever quilter out there would have blogged about this - I didn't need to buy another ruler and wait a week for it to be delivered. So, thank you Google and KarrieLynn of Freckled Whimsy - I finally found your HST tutorial from 2010 which told me to sew both sides of the jelly roll together and use an ordinary square ruler like this:

Brill ... but ... the pattern said I should have got 24 HSTs out of the strips and this was all that was left after cutting 20:

Never mind, that's what a healthy stash is for! See DH - told you there was a very good reason for me buying fabric 'just in case!' I went for plain black and lilac polka dots so as not to clash with the black and purple patterns and colours in the jelly roll. Think it works ok - do you! 

And, sometimes you just have to photograph the back of a block:

I had a go at the 3rd unit - this wasn't as tricky as I thought it would be ... again, it just took a bit of time. You have to mark the back of the squares with a triangle template then sew 8 of them to a strip. The pattern doesn't call for pinning but I did:

No blocks to show you yet, as it takes a bit of time to cut and sew the individual units that make up a block. But I will get some done over the next few days so please come back for a visit soon :)

Linking up to Lee at Freshly Pieced's WIP Wednesday.