That Was Harder Than I Thought It Would Be

Part of the problem was I had a choice between using a charm pack or using a variety of fabric with different colors. I couldn't find a charm pack with enough variation so I decided to just do the variations of fabric. The problem was I didn't have as much of a variation as the pattern wanted so I had to figure out how I was going to incorporate the fabric options I did have. I think I have it figured out, but I won't know for sure until it's time to assemble the blocks together. 

I have to know, where do you all get your charm packs? The only ones I could find were color themed so I would have thirty 5" blocks of different blues, but none of the other colors I needed. That meant I'd need six different charm packs and I'd only use at the most an eighth of each one. Is it possible to find charm packs with more variation in them? Or do I just need to bite the bullet and get a bunch of different ones and keep the leftovers on hand for future projects? 

Another issue that I wasn't expecting was the need to cut out shapes with curves, not just straight lines. I had to cut out circles and leaves to make the poppies that will go down the center of the table runner. It was intimidating, but I was able to get through it. 

I was able to use my small rotary cutter for the first time which made cutting relatively easy, once I got the hang of it. 

Is there a trick to cutting out patterns? I just made one 'stencil' and held it in place while I cut around it because I needed 24 leaves and I didn't want to cut out 24 paper leaves. Going forward, should I take the time to cut out individual stencils and pin them to the material? These were so small it was easy to keep them where I needed them, but I imagine it will be harder if the item I'm cutting out is bigger. 

These will be applique'd to a block of fabric, which I'm a bit nervous about. I'll probably be tackling that next week, out of order, just so I don't lose any of the leaves or stems. I've done applique before, but never with a machine. 

The rest of the cutting was relatively straight forward. Lots of squares and rectangles.

Now that they're all cut and I can see them all together I'm hoping the colors all work and don't clash. I feel like bad fabric choices can really ruin a great project. 

I have all the sizes stacked together so you can't see all of the fabric in this picture. What I can see I like together, but there is some orange hidden in there that I'm a bit worried about. And the blues are brighter in the picture than they are in person. We'll see how this goes. 

I'm ready to move on to the next step. Bring it on.