The Fabric Spark winner and some quilting

First, congratulations to Renee, who blogs at Quilts of a Feather, the lucky winner in my ongoing blog birthday celebration. Congratulations Renee!

Renee wins this beautiful bundle, curated by me for the Fabric Spark Monthly Sparks Club and donated by Fabric Spark for this giveaway. Thank you again Daryl and Fabric Spark!

Renee was commenter #15 - sometimes the Random Number Generator picks those who are the very first to the party. I even now know Renee, who is lovely and nice - I met her at QuiltCon, where she won a major award for her fantastic quilting.

And I have some quilting to show off. First up are my Bee Sewcial blocks for Karen, who blogs at Capitola Quilter. Her theme was Stretch, and she asked for blocks in the colours of denim and also greys. I had a lot of fun making improv stretched out curves.



 I was thinking I might add some more grey curves but I had to leave it as is when I saw the curvy bottom in the stretched out jeans.



This was actually the first block I made, and I was going to take it to Karen at QuiltCon but then I dropped in a puddle of water my iron had released on my cutting board. So it has been hand washed now and pressed again. As Karen pointed out, one gets their jeans wet regularly.



And I also added this improv herringbone onto Ethne's quilt in my Pips Round Robin - I have to say that I am smitten with improv herringbone now and hope to make more soon. We are making a mini quilt in this round robin with the quilts going from the UK, to France, to the USA to Canada, to Australia and then to the UK again. This has been a very challenging project and I am just loving the results - it is fun to work with such a talented group of women.



Look at that mini quilt so far, it has only one more addition before it is done. Isn't it fantastic?

Well, it is going to be a warm day, I hope to sew and to garden and maybe even take a nap.

Best,

Leanne

Bee Blocks and Pips Round Robin

I made that block yesterday for Stephanie at Spontaneous Threads (her instruction post to the bee is here). Stephanie is Queen Bee in Bee Sewcial for January, as we start our second year.  (By the way, the light here is crap and those wavy lines on the grays are not actually there, it is a photo thing.)

This is the solids inspiration based bee that Stephanie and I dreamed up and invited some talented friends to join. You will see our approach mentioned here by the Modern Quilt Guild to explain their Charity Quilt Challenge for this year. You can find us on instagram as #beesewcial and if you want to be inspired by our themes, post your photos under #inspiredbybeesewcial so we can find them.

Stephanie asked us to use the theme linear using mustardy yellows, greys and whites with a pop of a warm colour. I cut all the seams (except the outside trimming and the insertion of the pink-red line) without rulers for these blocks as I wanted them to have the soft feel of improv, rather than the stark feel of measured stripes. I did aim for pretty straight, and I am getting better at free hand cutting it seems.



On the first block - up at the top - I am thinking that it might be better with that right lighter grey side trimmed to about half, but I am going to leave it to Stephanie to decide that as she pieces the irregular sized blocks she receives together. I'm going to send her the left over bits too in case they are useful. I ruler cut the strip of rich pink-red to really emphasize the angle and the pop of colour. It gives one either a sense of perspective or intrusion, that pink line supercedes the yellow lines, overpowers them, has priority - is more urgent - and you might wonder why - well whatever you might see, it mostly just felt interesting to me.

This is my second block. I have to say that I am totally smitten with it. The light gray and snow white together look like a pencil drawing. After I made the first set of strips, I had to leave out the mustardy yellows all together. And my warm pop became orange, to keep that softened tone. 

This second block sings to me and I hope to be able to make another similar but quilt sized. I would love to see it on my - or even more likely, on one of my kids' beds. I find it interesting that I am less inclined to "interpret" or "explain" this block to you. It just feels right to me and I assume you will feel the same - which I also find interesting.

Both blocks are around 14" squarish, Stephanie can trim the if she needs to.

I don't think I shared earlier my other group project, the Pip Mini Quilt Round Robin, before I mailed it off earlier this month. I added the butterfly to the right of the purple line - I know I have shown you just the butterfly before. After a lot of humming and hawing about how to add the butterfly on to piece, I decided to frame that butterfly with the skinny strips and particularly more of the purple that you see in the flying geese that Dee added.

The decision of how to add this butterfly on was hard as my decision has made the quilt wider than tall, but the next person, Susan, could always change it when she gets it for her turn anyway. I am learning a lot in this group too.

And, if you are a timely reader, there is 5.5 hours left before January Scraptastic Tuesday's link up closes - it closes at 10 pm MST today (Monday, January 18) so join us if you have not yet done so, and Nicky and I will have the winners of the great prizes tomorrow.

Best,

Leanne