I'm actually not being as slow on my stitch-a-long at the moment as I'd thought I'd be. I figured I'd get several blocks done now before I start school again--that way I can just work on embroidery in the pockets of time I get once I'm back in class.
So, to whit: I've now got my second crazy quilt block pieced. It sat for awhile because there were some gaps that I had to fix and I had a couple of other projects I needed to knock out first. When I got a random few minutes earlier this week, though, I was able to fix those gaps and call the block done. Well, almost done. I still need to stay-stitch the outside edges so it doesn't drive me nuts while I'm embroidering
I don't like this one nearly as well as my first block. Partly, I tried to get more adventurous in the fabrics and I'm not 100% behind my own choices, but that can probably be fixed with some clever embroidery. The other part was simply my struggles with filling those gaps that appeared. I've decided I'm not a fan of this particular method.
For those of you playing along at home, this is the second block style in Allie Aller's Crazy Quilt class on Craftsy: curved piecing using templates. The curved piecing wasn't a problem at all, but some of the fabric pieces just weren't big enough to fully cover the places they were supposed to cover, somehow. Again, the nice thing about crazy quilts is you can just throw some more fabric on--it's just a little harder to work that out with the curves than it was on my first block that was all straight lines. I tried to keep paying attention to balancing color and design as I was adding extra fabrics to cover gaps, but I still think it would've looked better had I not had to add three extra spots of fabric. Oh well--again, in the grand scheme of things, when I put several blocks altogether, this probably won't be an issue at all.
Her next block style doesn't include templates. Yay! I'm looking forward to digging into that one, but I'm giving myself a few days before kicking it into gear.
Don't forget to check out the progress of other folks who have joined the Stitch-a-long. You can join the Flickr group even if you're just a lurker!