Progress on summertime sampler

On Sunday after a lovely dinner/family gathering at my mom's, I took another "me" day.  That's a day where I take on no responsibilities and do what my heart desires.  I spent the whole day in my happy place.....my quilting room.

I made some more blocks for the summer sampler quilt/wall hanging.  Here is the watermelon block. There are no hand stitches yet, as I am just taking the time to set the blocks up.

I have laid out the blocks on my sewing table and I am sorting colours, to distribute them across the quilt, and fuse them in place with Barely There fusible webbing.  Once I am done all the blocks, I can at my leisure, do the handwork.

This is the potted flower block.  So far, my mom says this is her favourite.

There is the tea pot and tea cups block.  On this block, hand stitched swirls will make a huge difference to the overall feel of this block.  Most of the blocks are the same.  The handwork will set them off, give them more definition and detail.

Followed by the fish block.  I am truly not in love with the fish.  Not liking how the very bright green fins stand out against the pink fish and distract your eyes from looking at the whole block, as one.  I also find the light blue fins of the red fish a bit blinding.  It almost looks like white in the picture.

I am going to have to give this block a bit more thought, once I am done setting the others.

Next we have the house block.  This block will also benefit from some handwork.  In the original block the house is a perky yellow, however I have found it difficult to find wool in yellow.  In the whole store there was only one yellow piece, and that yellow piece was a very bright yellow.  So, I've gone with a more traditional colour for the house.  My thought being that the house colour will balance out the watering can on the other side of the quilt.

Purple is another difficult colour to find.  Hence the green for the roof of the house, instead of purple.  If all else fails, I tend to go with traditional.  It doesn't make for an exciting block, but not every block needs to be eye catching.  Some of them, just need to be pretty.

So, there you have it!!!  I am halfway there, with six out of the twelve blocks, set and the next two are already drawn out.

I can already see a very big difference in my blocks from the ones in the original pattern.  Though there are many blocks very similar to the original blocks, mine look a bit more subdued.  The original pattern of Summertime Sampler is very bright and beautiful!  It uses all solids, whereas mine uses mostly patterned wool fabric with some solids and the ones I am using are not quite so bright.

I feel that it is just as pretty, but in a different way.  I was initially drawn to the brightness of the original pattern, however I am still very much liking my version of the pattern.  Hope you like it too!