Squares, squares, squares

Hi all! It's moving day tomorrow, very exciting! Day off today to 'pack' (read: have a lie-in, do Christmas shopping and at some point put things in boxes) so thought I'd pop in to say hi.

When I last left you, I'd been working on lots of mini embroideries with some friends. Well, next up was turning them into two quilt tops. My inspiration was this quilt. Making something with this pattern had been on my to-do list for a while. And so I began by laying out the plain squares:

And then started adding in the pictures to replace the embroidery-representation-paperclips (technical term):

Next up I piled the squares neatly:

And started making some blocks :)

I tried different methods of making the blocks - with the first quilt I didn't pin the squares at all, with the second I put one pin in either side of every intersection. In the finished product I'm not sure you can tell the difference! The pinning made things a bit more accurate so I didn't have to redo any 'those points don't quite match' seams, so I'm not sure which was the quicker method in the long run. What do you do? Are you a pinner or not? I'm still finding my sewing style :)

Before too long, something resembling a quilt appeared:

And I soon had a quilt top :)

More on these quilts coming soon!

PS: Below is a typical shot of my lounge (soon to be my old lounge, sob) when I've been let loose to sew -  one project on the floor, another on the table, a pile of fabric and assorted discarded jumpers because I've got too hot when ironing fabric. Does anyone else take over entire rooms when they sew?!