Wednesday 31 January 2018

January 2018 Bee Block Round-up



I’ve stayed with both my bees from last year again. I really enjoy the variety of sewing challenges being in a bee brings every month. All my other bee mates from Bee Inspired have stayed on in the group and Sharon at Yellow Cat Quilt Designs has started us off in January with the Blossom Hearts Quilts Bee Hive version of the Quatrefoil block. This one is designed by Clover and Violet. Sharon is making a quilt for Project Linus and asked for pink, green and blue with a white background. I love the way this block turned out and wanted to keep it, it’s so sweet.


I have changed hives this year in Stash Bee. Diana (@reddeliciouslife) has organized everyone into hives based on preferred communication platform, either Instagram, Facebook or blog and email, and it is working out superbly. I have gotten to know my fellow bee mates quickly, although I already knew Jen from last year (@jentexas06), Velda (Freckled Fox Quiltery) from 2016 New Quilt Bloggers Hop and the Bee Inspired group and Jan (Cocoa Quilts) from the 2017 New Quilt Bloggers Hop. Everyone seems right friendly.


Hive Mama Cyndi (@thegrinch1964) chose the Sparklers Quilt block from Jedi Craft Girl in shades of pink, navy and grey on a low volume background. I made two blocks because I put the first one in the post without adding a stamp (forehead slap) and I’m not 100% sure it will ever make it across to her.


I’m participating in the 2018 Monthly Color Challenge with Jen over at Patterns by Jen this year. All the details are here. Jen and Jen from Dizzy Quilter are both designing blocks for a sampler quilt but you can link anything in the colour of the month. I’ve decided to make simple 16 patch blocks. The upcoming colours are listed in advance here and Jen at Dizzy Quilter has colour coded her list. I used my snipping tool to turn it into a picture and sent it to my phone for quick and easy reference. I’ll be linking up for the end of month check in.

What about you? Have you joined any of the many QALs or bees?

Happy sewing
Sue


Wednesday 17 January 2018

Wayward Transparency Quilt Top


It’s time to link up our quilt and quilt top finishes for the Wayward Transparency Quilt along.


This is mine. It turned out pretty well in the end, after taking out and replacing my original fabric choice in the ‘darker’ sections. I think the scale of the prints makes it difficult to see the transparency effect. Yvonne warned me about it and I should have listened.


The layout of the blocks is the result of a mistake I made in sewing them together and it's one I'm more than happy to have made.


The blocks have been down-sized from the original pattern and I also used flip and sew techniques to avoid too many seams through the daisy print. Changing the fabric in the overlay section after piecing the blocks meant that I was able to slip half square triangle sections in making me look outstandingly clever ;-).


The finished size is 30 inches square and I’ve photographed it hanging on my garden shed using whiteboard magnets. Nifty! Now to find other places to use them...


Happy sewing
Sue


Wednesday 3 January 2018

Curated Quilts Minimalist Challenge (a finish)

Hello and Happy New Year!

I had a marvelous break that felt much longer than it actually was and I’m back feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the challenges of 2018.

When I was thinking about maybe setting some goals for 2018 one of the things I thought I’d like to have a go at is the Curated Quilts mini challenges. I also have a long list of quilt tops to be finished. I want to improve my fabric selection in my blocks and I’m doing a bit of Pinterest study to that end J. Also use my stash – I have a Pavlovian response to the words ‘fabric sale’ and I might have gone a touch nuts at Thanksgiving. This is half of what I bought. On the up side I love it all so that’s a bonus.


I decided that I need to make 10 quilt tops before I’m allowed to buy any more fabric and that lasted till yesterday when the local fabric shop had 50% off.

Anyway enough blathering, the latest CuratedQuilts Mini Challenge was announced just before Christmas giving me a little extra time to play about and ta da this is what I can show for it.


While the other entries I’ve seen have used more of the available colours for their challenges I’ve chosen to go with black and pale grey. I have no excuse for this since I had all the colours in my stash.

I was sure I was going to mess this up somewhere and it came pretty close size-wise since it finishes smack on the minimum at 10 inches square. Next time I’ll start bigger and trim.
The little strips are ¼ inch wide so I paper pieced that section and matchstick quilted it in random widths. One resolution ticked off already!

Happy sewing
Sue