A Little Sewing

On my post from Wednesday, I mentioned thinking I might do a little sewing to relax after a day of various physical labor type activities.  It was a little tongue-in-cheek, since my post was titled Women's Work and was pretty much about a rather manly job like tamping clay floors in the horse barn.  However, by the time I got done with dinner, and the dishes were washed, sewing did sound pretty inviting.  I am currently participating in a couple of online quilt block swaps, and as a result, sewing is one of the items on my to-do list.

I tackled the quilt block for one of the swaps.  In this one, a square of fabric is provided, and each participant adds whatever coordinating or contrasting fabrics they wish, as well as chooses their own pattern for the block.  The provided fabric had a brown background, which was a challenge for me as I don't use browns very much in my quilting or sewing.  At first, I didn't think I had anything in my stash that would work with the swap fabric.

But then I stopped concentrating on the brown, and looked at the other, less noticeable colors in the fabric.  Suddenly, I had several fabrics that would go well with the brown one.  Once I had a few fabrics in mind to work with, it wasn't hard to find a pattern.

What I chose to make is  the Zig Zag Path pattern, from the book 5500 Quilt Block Designs by Maggie Malone, which I received as a present from my mother about half a decade ago. (Thanks, Mom!  I love this book!)  It was the illusion of motion that drew my eye to the block (I tend to gravitate toward motion type blocks for some reason), and the simplicity of piecing sealed the deal.  Here was a perfect relaxing project to wind down my active day.

My finished block:

It really is a lot more square than shown in the picture.  I need to work on my camera skills for taking pictures of quilt blocks; they always come out looking wavy in photos.