Grace in the Meadow QAL Progress

We are now a little past the halfway point of the Grace in the Meadow quilt along 😊 I have discovered that running a quilt along with daily emails makes for a lot of extra computer work that doesn't leave much time for writing blog posts. Today, though, I thought I'd share the blocks I've made so far during the QAL. You can also see my first version of the quilt top here.

We started out with these Clay's Choice blocks. I love these Shimmer fabrics from Northcott! The metallic accents don't show up well in the picture, but they're beautiful in person.

Then I fell behind on the second block, the Diamond Flower block, since I was still waiting on my box of thread from Aurifil. I haven't gotten back to these blocks yet, so I'm still behind. I do have them all traced and ready for stitching, thanks to my fancy-pants lightbox 😄 

The box of thread was worth the wait, though! Just look at these beautiful colours! These ones are all 50 wt, to be used for both versions I'm making.

And these are all 12 wt, to use for the embroidered flowers on my second version.

With the thread finally in hand, I was ready to dive into embroidering the Small Snowball Flower blocks. So far I've finished 4 of the 8 blocks. I'm using Aurifil 12 wt in 2545 and  2535 for the flower petals and 2135 for the flower centers. 

I intentionally chose bold colours for all of the 12 wt threads. I didn't want the flowers to be faint and these certainly aren't! That's the same reason I chose to use chain stitch rather than backstitch, since chain stitch makes a thicker line. That helps the flowers stand out, too. I'm so pleased with how they're looking!

Next up were the Turnstile blocks. These ones come together so quickly I was able to finish them all up in one evening.

Now we're working on the 8 Teardrop Flower blocks. So far I've finished the first one. The flower center is 2535, the darker petals are 4093 and the lighter ones are 2810. 

Here are all of the blocks I've finished so far. I love how they're looking together!

Along with making my own blocks, I've really enjoyed seeing the blocks made by the other participants. It's amazing to see how others use my patterns to create their own special quilts! If you want to see, there are a few blocks shared using #graceinthemeadowqal on Instagram 😊