Weathervane block

So, I was browsing the web Sunday afternoon for free bag patterns to spark my interest and then I found some great free quilt patterns which I decided to download and in the process discovered a great new stitching blog. Don't call me Betsy. 

Specifically, I found her post about the Weathervane Block and the little experiment she tried out which she made into a tutorial. And it looked easy enough to follow as well as being a bit challenging. So I gave it a go!

I'm a fan of traditional straight edged blocks and I like playing with fabric colours and patterns to see what happens. I've loved this yellow paisley fabric since I bought in Sydney last April and the gelato striped fabric I think came to me as a scrap from my Great-Aunt M's stash. I've had a terrible experience with striped fabric in the past so I needed to try again. And the soft green teacup fabric I bought in a great store in St Charles Missouri in 2005 and I've been dying to use it in something fun. 

I'm really impressed with the pattern and how easy it was to pull together, though I'm not a fan of pressed open seams.

I thought that I could use this as practice piece for machine quilting designs being small enough to be a manageable quilting piece on the machine, but also have the scope to try quilting around shapes and filling in spaces with different patterns rather than free motion stippling. I haven't really progressed past the basic beginner level of quilting so I need to make an effort to practice these aspects. And I'm better when there's a product at the end of a task rather than quilting blank space on scraps. The waste kinda gets to me. What do I do with the quilted scraps? Hence, the mini-quilt quilting project idea inspired by Don't Call Me Betsy's weathervane block tutorial.

BTW - I totally get the Betsy thing, cos I'm the same about being called Ellie instead of Elle. Urgh!