Typing that heading made me think of Laura Secord Miniatures. A good friend used to get a box of Laura Secord Miniature chocolates for Christmas every year. No one — and I mean no one — got to touch that box. She absolutely loved them but then the Laura Secord store that was close by closed and no more of the miniatures.

My French General miniatures are much less fattening! It all began with Winding Ways, Quilting the Inklingo Way, Linda Franz’ new book. While it uses Winding Ways block, the lessons taught in it are applicable to any block plus lots of really helpful information re curved piecing. Which is, as you’ll know if you’ve read my blog for any length of time, one of my favourite things. The book is a hardcover book and the paper stock is wonderful – just touching the pages is a sensory delight!

On the weekend two new Winding Ways collections were released – a 3″ one and a 3″ Deluxe one. Of course I had to get the Deluxe as I want to play with all the variations. The minute I saw some of the variations I was well and truly sunk! I have so many ideas that I think I could be making Winding Ways quilts for quite some time!

To begin with I decided to stick with the traditional Winding Ways block. And out came the French General fabrics.

All the pieces for a block laid out. Even laid out, it’s tiny. The magic of this block is the long horizontal centre red piece – a double size of the ones that are placed vertically. It makes a huge difference in piecing the blocks and cuts down on the bulk in the centre

The first block done.When it’s sewn it’s wonderfully tiny. I grin from ear to ear just looking at these wonderful little blocks!

A second block was done.

The back, after pressing. I haven’t graded the seams yet but I will do that as lessening the amount of bulk with tiny blocks like this makes a huge difference.

The first two blocks, side by side.

I’ve got quite a few pieces printed for this and intend to make this at least lap size. I think. That may change.

I’ve always liked the French General fabric lines but hadn’t bought too much of it. Now I wish I had as I realized as I was pulling the fabrics for this that the different collections all play so nicely together.

The last couple of weeks have been interesting. We both had our first shot of the vaccine, for which I am so grateful. I had a few minor side effects. Mr. Q.O. had none. Then we had technical issues. First it was my cellphone not working properly on wifi. Then Mr. Q.O.’s cellphone stopped working properly on wifi. Then his computer. My computer didn’t because mine is hard-wired to the modem. You’d think we might have twigged to the modem being the issue just knowing that. But no, we didn’t. Mr. Q.O. spent all sorts of time looking for solutions online. I got frustrated and decided to just do a factory reset on my phone which made no difference because – well, my phone still didn’t work on wifi. I really can’t believe I did that! Finally, something made Mr. Q.O. suggest unplugging the modem and then plugging it back in. And it worked. Perfectly. Why I didn’t suggest that is beyond me as that’s always my go-to idea – and it almost always works. But this time, when it once again would have been the solution, what did I do? Made myself all sorts of headaches with the factory reset. Thank goodness I had been backing up my phone – at least I didn’t lose anything.

“Fantastic Chocolate Company”

Baxter was, I think, not impressed with me trying to take his photo.