Wednesday 27 June 2018

June 2018 Bee Block Round-up



I have two blocks to show you this month for  Bee Inspired since I didn’t post a block round-up last month. First up this month’s queen is Jen from A Dream and a Stitch. She asked us to choose a block to make up in tertiary colours that she can turn into a mini. When I posted my Stash Bee Geese Trails block from Piece and Press for March on Instagram Jen said it was on her list of makes. I know my own list is huge and it rarely stays the same between morning and night so I made her one. I used a different pattern this time around, the Circle of Geese from Piece by Number, and increased the size by 133% so that it turns out at 16” finished. I wasn’t intentionally going to place the geese in rainbow order and that’s just as well because somehow the plan I did have went awry anyway.


The second block from last month is for Velda at Freckled Fox Quiltery. It’s a cake block from a free pattern by Patty Sloniger (link to download page here). Velda wanted us to make our favourite cake and for me the most important ingredient is chocolate. My other inspiration was an ex-work mate who likes to cook and always says he makes his dishes with love (somehow he makes it sound slightly unsavoury) so I put some love in as well with the printed heart fabric. I’m calling it as red velvet cake with a chocolate Smarties frosting, giving me a good excuse to buy Smarties for photo styling!


And in Stash Bee Em from Moonlight Sewing asked us to make improv single colour squares with a couple of strips of the adjacent colour on the colour wheel, then add white triangles to the side and add the central colour to the corners (tutorial here). I definitely prefer the efficiencies of a planned block but I love the way this turned out, it’s so citrusy!

Happy sewing
Sue

Linking up to Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts, Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation and Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

Wednesday 13 June 2018

Curated Quilts: Flapping of Butterfly Wings (a finish)



Improv is not really my thing so when the latest Curated Quilts Mini Challenge was announced I thought I was going to sit it out. The theme is ‘Connections’ and like a dog with a bone I kept trying to brain storm ideas. Eventually I came up with this idea: in chaos theory small events can make big differences in outcomes and a common analogy is the connection between the flapping of a butterfly’s wings and the occurrence of a tornado.


That off centre section in the navy background is my attempt at a cyclone/ hurricane/ typhoon symbol. 


Note, also, that like a real meteorological map my quilted spirals are closer and more organic around the cyclone symbol? That wasn’t exactly intentional but more a product of the difficulty of quilting a tight circle. It gets better as it goes further out and the circles are larger.


The challenge colours are yellow, mustard yellow, navy, cream, grey and moss green. I made a moss green butterfly as well but I couldn’t fit it back into the mini within the size limitations I set myself. Finished size is 10 ¾ inch square.

I’m trying to keep track of the issue with Blogger and comment notification but so far there has been no fix and time marches on. They say they are working on it but in the meantime I won’t be able to reply – my apologies, it’s one of the best parts of blogging.

Happy sewing

Sue