bee block roundup

It's been so long, I think I've forgotten how to blog!

Yes, I made it back from New York, and the trip was a lot of fun. The 'Quilters Take Manhattan' event was interesting, and it was a hoot to watch Mark Lipinski and Jay McCarroll interact. I was too shy to actually speak to either one of them after the talk, much less get my picture taken with them!! But here's a crummy picture I took while they were doing the interview. That crazy outfit on the right was something Jay made in college, and it's what he submitted as his 'representative' piece to go along with his interview.

He also showed a bunch of patchwork clothes he had made, modeled by members of the Alliance. Beautiful!

Since that trip, I've been crazy busy - catching up on work, getting the kid started in kindergarten, finishing a big quilt (more on that later!), getting ready for quilt retreat (it was awesome! more on that later too!), and so much more. I've been keeping up with my do. Good Stitches bee blocks, and here's a round up of the ones I've made over the last few months:

Lollipops for Des. Here's the completed quilt. It's fantastic!!! I had so much fun making these blocks that I made like 3 times as many as I was supposed to. Maybe that's a sign I should make a quilt like this myself!

'Houndstooth' blocks for Lydia - these were fun to make! No finished quilt for this one yet...

'Citrus sails' for Lyanna. Looks like it's almost done!

Character blocks for Melissa. She's going all out to make 4 quilts for a family in need. Here's the first completed top.

Holly's purple/orange/gray blocks for last month...

The beast - a swoon block for Rachel. This block annoyed me in so many ways, from its size (24" square) to its complexity to the amount of fabric it required. The fabric requirements were very specific (big prints, in tomato red, slate grey, dark blue and light blue), and I had exactly one red fabric that I thought would fit. Problem was, I had only a 16x20" piece of it when the pattern called for a fat quarter!! Right. Switching out the normal flying geese for the no-waste method helped, and I just squeaked it out. But I was afraid the whole time of screwing it up... not fun! On the up side, I'm sure it will be a lovely quilt. Here's a collage of the other blocks so far.

I'm up for the Inspire circle for October. I chose this framed scrappy 16-patch block. It was so much fun to make (and I do love to use up scraps!) that I might just make another quilt like this for myself some day!

My plan is to make the quilt bigger (since Project Linus seems to always need more twin-size quilts for the older kids) by adding solid blocks of big colorful prints. I can't wait to put this one together!!

Okay, that's all the blocks. Yay! Next post, quilt retreat. I'm just waiting for Karen's post, so I can steal pictures. :-)

finding my lost mojo

Oh, my poor neglected blog!

It's been a whole month - I had a work trip, followed immediately by a visit from my mom and sister for Vada's birthday, and then I had to catch up on work... It was just one thing after another! For a few weeks, the only sewing I managed was this birthday outfit for Vada, just another appliqued t-shirt and circle skirt. (Yes, I am a one-trick pony!)

Isn't she a cutie, though? It's the only year I could give her a "V" shirt (V being the roman numeral for 5 - get it?). It doesn't take much to amuse me! I love how her outfit matches her new bike - not planned at all.

So, after life settled down a bit, I tried my usual trick for getting back into sewing. I took the old two-page list of UFOs and TODOs, and rewrote it.

Somehow it still ran over to two pages! Drat - I'd better get busy!

Still not motivated, I moved onto trick number 2 - an easy sewing task with a hard deadline. These are my blocks for the April "Faith" circle in the do. Good Stitches bee. I loved the rainbow theme, and I really loved the freedom to make blocks in whatever size we pleased. I was having so much fun, I made 3 blocks instead of 2. They are simple designs, but I guess that's just my style!

So, that's one thing to cross off the new list! Yay! Now I need to get cracking on blocks for the second circle I joined - the new "Inspire" circle for Project Linus quilts. Next month is my turn to be the quilter for that circle, so I get to pick the theme. I'm a little nervous about it, but I think I picked something fun and flexible, so hopefully it will go smoothly.

just a few more blocks

Here are my two blocks for this month in the do. Good Stitches bee. I didn't love the construction, because we had to use paper templates (which seems like it could be error-prone). But I think the quilt will look awfully cute!

I'm pretty proud of my work - the centers are almost perfect! I used starch at every step, and I think that really helped.

And surely you've heard of Moda's Just One Star project by now. Of course I had to join in! But asking me to make just one of anything? Ha!! If I pull a fabric out of the stash, it's not going back in! I pulled out a couple blues, and made as many stars as I could - 20 to be exact!

As I was following the instructions they provided, I got really tired of all the trimming and waste that went along with making the star points. A light bulb finally went off when I realized that these are just flying geese. I hadn't made them before, but I had seen tutorials for no-waste methods. I found this one, figured out the new dimensions I'd need, and tried it with a red fabric (yes, just one star that time!). It worked great! So much faster, and no waste. So, if you are thinking of making these blocks and want to use an easier method for the star points, use both of the tutorials together, with these substitutions:

• Four 2 3/8" (2.375") squares of red/blue fabric (instead of the eight 2" squares the Moda tutorial calls for)
• One 4 1/4" (4.25") square of background fabric (instead of the four 2" x 3.5" rectangles the Moda tutorial calls for)

Hope that helps - go make some stars!

bee block round up

I haven't posted my bee blocks in a long time! First up, here is the last round of blocks for the vintage sheet bee...

For November. This is going to make a such a pretty quilt! And the block was not as difficult as it looks. (Here's a link to the tutorial, if you want to try the block yourself!)

December - time-consuming, but kinda cool!

January - my first ever "representational" block! It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. It takes a whole different way of thinking about putting things together!

And finally, for February. I love the look of these blocks, but honestly they were such a pain in the butt to make. And I felt like I was always trimming, trimming, trimming - more fabric got thrown away than was left in the block!

And here are my blocks for the do. Good Stitches bee... (i'm so petty - every time I have type that name out, the kreativ punctuation drives me batty!)

Anyway, here's the November block... You should click over and see the final quilt here. It's gorgeous!

And the December blocks. Nice and simple, yay!

The January block... I was glad that I already had experience with this block! I loved picking out the fabrics for this one.

Okay, I'm all caught up now, whew! :-)

October bee blocks

Here are my bee blocks for the do. Good Stitches bee (nice and straightforward)...

and the vintage sheet bee.

I have to admit, I was a little intimidated by this block. With all those seams, I was worried about having it come out the wrong size. But the directions (and my 1/4" foot!) are spot-on. I only had to trim a tiny bit, and it was perfect. I think it's going to be a really cute quilt. Though if I was making this myself, I know I'd take the easy way out (just do a straight patchwork, and set it on point). :-)

retreat - project #1

The quilt retreat was awesome! I was fighting a stupid cold the whole time, but I was determined to not let it get the best of me. There were no super late nights this year, but when we weren't eating or sleeping, we were sewing! Here are my buddies Quynh and blogless Suzette (not great pictures, sorry! I hate my new camera.... grr....)

My biggest project by far was a half-square-triangle quilt. It's been on my wish-list since I saw this quilt last summer. Loved, loved, loved it! I started with 5" squares, with white for the background, and 32 prints from my stash (mostly "colonial" type reproductions), in all sorts of pink, peach and salmon-y colors. I came to the retreat with all the squares cut, and the white ones marked for sewing. It took me about 8 hours just to sew, cut and press all the HSTs! I made them in the standard fashion (sewing 1/4" on both sides of the diagonal), except that I trimmed the corners before I cut along the diagonal. I don't know where I read this tip, but if you fold the square along the diagonal and snip across the corner (perpendicular to the raw edges, not perpendicular to the fold), it makes a notch in the corner such that you don't have to do any trimming after you cut and press the HSTs. It works great - but only if you're very precise! My HSTs were pretty good, but not exactly perfect. I was torn - should I spend the time to square up all 256 of those blocks (ug!), or just throw caution to the wind and sew them all together (and maybe end up disappointed)? I had some (40) extra blocks, so I decided to make a test mini quilt to see just how far off my squares were. Turns out that they were fine! Or at least fine enough for me. :-)

And after 8 more hours of sewing, and I had 16 blocks of 16 HSTs! Yay!

I would have sewn them all together and called it done, except certain friends kept pestering me with suggestions... How about a different arrangement for the blocks? Like maybe this...

Or maybe all pointing out...

Or maybe all pointing in...

And how about sashing around each block? Or maybe just around the groups of 4 blocks? Would the sashing be the same white? Or maybe an orange or gray would look cool! Arg!!!! After 16 hours of working on it, I was in no frame of mind to make a decision! I gathered up the blocks, and moved on to a different project. I'm going to let it percolate for a while. If you have any opinions or brilliant ideas, let me know! :-)

september bee blocks

Here's my block for Colima, for the Vintage Sheet Quilting Bee. I love the "flower" blocks she requested! She asked us to use similar colors, and it was really hard to choose a set of prints! I finally settled on sort of "groovy green flowers". I like it! [I feel the need to point out that the block is actually square - I'm using a new camera, and it doesn't do closeups very well...]

And here are my two blocks for the do. Good Stitches bee. The fabrics are pretty random (from my very random stash!), but it looks like they will go good with the others. Can't wait to see how Jennifer will put them together!

rainbow blocks

Someone else's UFO - if you're a thrifting junkie like me, you're bound to come across one. I don't know why, but I always feel compelled to DO something with them. Like I'm their last chance, and if I don't do it, nobody else will, and all that work will be wasted!! Sometimes, it only takes a couple finishing steps, like this one. Sometimes, it's starting almost from scratch, like this one. (Okay, that last one is STILL a UFO, but at least I got as far as two quilts, almost basted! and I have plans to have them quilted by the end of summer!). And there are so many more in my shelves, patiently waiting for me to fulfill their destiny...

In one of the stash sales I just posted about, there was this little pile of castoffs. I'm not sure it's an official UFO, maybe it was just some leftovers from a completed quilt. There were some loose half square triangles, some strips, some squares...

Some HSTs sewn into rows, some squares sewn in rows...

When I saw them, I immediately thought of Anna Maria Horner's Rainbow Around The Block project, which requested monochromatic blocks. You can't get much more monochromatic than this! So, I spent a day trimming and sewing and came up with 10 blocks to send.

There were 8 of these...

And one each of these other two random blocks.

I think they are pretty "granny" looking, and certainly not as lovely as the many others that have been donated. But I like to think that sampler charity quilts are better when they have a couple "homely" blocks thrown in! Kinda like a reminder that everyone can contribute in life, no matter what your skill level is. And I also like to think that this little UFO has finally fulfilled its destiny!

where have I been?

I've been slacking on my blog, I know. Do you ever feel that you just have a limited number of things you can juggle at once, and in order to concentrate on something new, you just have to drop something else for a while until you get everything under control again? Well, I do! My new distraction isn't even anything of consequence, it's just... distracting. But, I will slowly catch back up!

First of all, a big THANK YOU to my bee partners for the blocks I've received in the last month or so. They are beautiful!

Clockwise from upper left - Bethany, Angela, Colima and Megan.

And while I have been slacking on the blog, I have not been slacking on the crafting! I'm happy to report that I have finished my second "Cancer sucks" quilt, which will soon be heading to my friend Kelli in Texas. Sending a quilt to someone in Texas, in August, sounds like the stupidest idea ever, huh?

Like the first one, this is all vintage sheets - two each of 35 pink prints, and the "solid" is a pink and white Pottery Barn gingham. The back is also a thrifted sheet, but it's a newer Ralph Lauren 100% cotton (and buttery soft too). The quilting is just a simple cross-hatch through the squares. The binding is not scrappy on this one, only because I'd recently picked up a nice pink print, and it was sitting too close to the cutting table when it came time to do the binding...

I tried a new place to hang a quilt to take some quick photos... Next time I'll haul out a stool to stand on. Vada will not be happy with me if I break her trampoline by greatly exceeding the weight limit!

I still have to add a label, and I'm on the hunt for a good inscription. My friend Kelli is deeply religious, but I'm not so much. Can anyone suggest a nice bible verse for me?