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

Q4 Begins - Link your list for the last quarter of the 2013 FAL

I have been reading all of your Q3 Finish-A-Long finishes posts - and will continue to read till I have read every one. I recommend perusing these links  for all the inspiring finishes and lovely stories about the projects. And, thank you to all of you, for all the compliments and nice things you have said about my cheerleading, encouraging and cajoling in the FAL. It truly is fun to be your "fearless leader".

This fall I have been tidying and cleaning, sorting and rearranging - the whole house it seems. This organizing fever has spilled over into my quilting plans. My Q4 list is crazy - I know several of you will just laugh and laugh, but I am optimistic. And I remind you, there are no penalties for not finishing your list, so go large. Here is mine:



1. Pickle Dish - I think this has been on all my 2013 lists. I have only about 24 dish units to make of the 200 required, I have 7 of the 25 blocks of 8 dish units sewn, then there is quilting and such but I really, really want this done as it would be nice to gift it at Christmas.



2. Asterix and other symbols quilt - I have all the blocks back from the talented quilters in Always Bee Learning, and worse, it is my month again in November. It is time to make these blocks into a quilt, I mean, look at how cool they are.



3. While we are on bee blocks, look at those beautiful improv sampler blocks from my friends in the Free Bee. I know how I want to piece these and quilt them, this is quick project and will be such an excellent quilt.



4. This block is called Stonehenge from the 99 Modern Blocks book and was made for me in the now finished Modern Blocks Bee. I might add some warmer coloured blocks too, I have more fabrics. But they are quick and easy, so surely I can finish this one too.



5. Cycles 2 - This feels like cheating. All it needs is the binding, but I don't want it to get set aside, so it is on the list.



6. The No quilt is a project near to my heart, and has sat mostly stalled. I have some lovely embroidered contributions and I need to get more blocks done. This quilt is for my office, to remind me to say No more often - just because I can do something does not mean I have time or should do it.



7. Emerald Irish Chain - Truly should be done already. Enough said.



8. Placemats - The awful brown table cloth is making me crazy, I need to get these done.



9. Giant Nordika Plus and pattern - I love the giant pluses, it will be easy to finish this one.



10. Mystery quilt - This is the most beautiful quilt top I have made - Sheila's pattern and teaching have a lot to do with that. I have been too scared to quilt it, but I think I will be ready this quarter.



11. Loads of flying geese - I love making these now that I have ruler assistance to keep them nice. I see these as a fill in piecing project, when I just want to sew something fast. And I love all the flying geese quilts I keep seeing, so maybe I can have one this quarter.



12. Cria, a sweater for me - I am excited to be knitting a sweater again, and this yarn is soft and lovely. This project should fit nicely around all the rest, and I keep it in my bag for all the lines, time spent waiting for kids and such.

You know there are more bee blocks in my drawer, and some other quilt tops too. But I am stopping at 12, after only finishing 2 things this quarter, my chances are slim. But I am hopeful none the less.

Now the news. The FAL will continue for all of us in 2014. As you will recall, Rhonda from Quilter in the Gap is the mastermind of the FAL, having started it in 2012 She decreed that it would move each year to another blog. So the FAL moved from Tennessee, U.S.A to Alberta, Canada and next year I am ever so pleased to announce that the FAL is off to Scotland!

Yes, my real life and internet friend, Katy from The Littlest Thistle is going to be our host for 2014. That's her in the middle, at Sewing Summit the year before this most recent one. I love this photo and stole it from her blog (hopefully she will be ok with that).

If you don't know Katy well yet, check out her blog - she is talented, funny and smart (she just explained a lot of math to all of us in a way anyone can understand in her tutorial this week). I know that we will all have the best time finishing along next year under her leadership.

Enough, get your Q4 lists done and link them here. If you need to check the FAL rules they are here. If you have questions, let me know in the comments or by email to shecanquilt [at] gmail [dot] com.

I will let you know our fantastic Q4 sponsors in a few days, I can assure you that you will want plenty of entries in the Q4 draws, so do go large with those lists - lets make Q4 the quarter with the largest number of finishes in FAL history.

Best,

Leanne

An InLinkz Link-up

This and that, let's think a bit

On October 29, 2012 Hurricane Sandy - the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, hit land in New Jersey, and proceded to bring destruction to a highly populated areas of the USA. This hurricane's progress mesmerized me, friends and family in the eastern part of Canada were in its path, although it was expected to do less damage by the time it hit Canada.

A quilter - Jennifer from Knotted Thread - put out a call for quilt blocks and set up a flickr group - she had family and friends who were seriously affected and wanted to bring them a quilt. Well, the response - from around the world - was overwhelming and fast, check out discussions in the flickr group. Those are the blocks I sent. Today Jennifer posted some finished quilt tops. The generosity of quilters the world wide is amazing.

There are loads of ways to help more families affected by Hurricane Sandy. I think the fastest way to connect is to read Victoria at Bumblebeans's post here and look around her blog a bit, she has posted a number of other organizations who will get quilts to families in need.



This is going to be a post of a bunch of somewhat random thoughts. That block above is called Diamond Ripples, from the Modern Blocks book, page 46 designed by Lara Finlayson and Toni asked for it in the Modern Blocks Bee. So I was wondering how that bit in the bottom corner was going to work in a quilt.



Well, one can make a mosaic with your one block and see. I used the mosaic maker at Blue Huge Labs and set the space between the images to zero. Clearly Toni will have a wonderful quilt, one I was just not able to picture in my head at all.



That block is for Marci in the Always Bee Learning Bee, it was designed by Malka Dubrawsky and is in her Fresh Quilts book. It is all Y seams, that was the learning part. Y seams are not hard at all, I think quilters need to totally stop worrying about them. If you want to see a tutorial about how to sew Y seams, Katie at From the Blue Chair just posted one today here, and she has a clever idea about how to mark the starting point too - she was sewing hexagons but a Y seam is a Y seam in the end and the technique is the same on any one of them.



Before I ramble on about blogging, that is my first triple zipper pouch, made with Debbie from A Quilter's Table's tutorial here. I am going to make another tonight for my Scrappy Swap partner, this one has a few things I would like to do better. But seriously, 3 working zippers and pockets in one pouch. Christmas is coming, gifts are needed, just saying. I will show you some more pictures as I go.

Do you get a lot of anonymous comments on your blog, and then a lot of emails about those comments? They are annoying and often try to sell me pharmaceuticals. In Blogger I went to the Design page, then to Settings, to Posts and Comments and then under the topic "who can comment" I changed it from "anyone" to "registered users". I believe that still lets most or all of the real people comment, but if you no longer can email me at shecanquilt [at] gmail.com (use the @ symbol). The anonymous comments are gone, totally gone. I highly recommend this change, it was actually Susan's suggestion and it works.



And while you are there, in Settings, go to Other, and at the top you should see blog tools. Export a copy of your blog to your computer or a usb stick or drive. Then you will have a blog back up. Lately folks have made mistakes, had computer issues, etc. It takes a few seconds and then you are set. I am going to try to do it every month, as I do my monthly recap, and you should too.



Today my friend Susan at Canadian Abroad is hosting the Thursday Think Tank which is Rebecca's regular link at Making Rebecca Lynne. If you have been doing some thinking, on any thing - it does not have to be about the holidays - you can link that post, and then visit some others too. To visit the others, at least right now on Susan's blog, you need to click the "trouble linking up, try here" button and you will then see and can follow links of the folks who have linked. It would be fun if a lot of folks were to link a thinking post at Susan's and visit the others, pretty much every post has some thinking in it, especially if you are quilting.

Do back up your blog, and give some thought to backing up your computer too. 

Best,

Leanne

The thing about Bees

When you participate in an on-line quilting bee, eventually it will be your month to be the queen bee and you get to ask everyone to make you blocks.

The thing about that is that you need to plan a quilt. So you need to decide what block you want. And then you need to decide what fabrics to send. And cut them, package them and mail them off. For me, that is not as easy as it sounds, and I hum and haw and change my mind several times.



November is my month in the Always Bee Learning bee. This is a really talented group of quilters who have set up this bee specifically to be challenged with new techniques and ideas, and they are all up for most anything. Those of you who have visited here before will not be surprised to learn that I decided to ask them to do some improv blocks.

I decided it was time to use some of my favourite fabrics. I decided to cut big chunks of two fabrics for each person because I wanted there to be enough fabric in the package for people to play and make mistakes without worry about running short. I have picked asterisk and plus blocks of any size - I think that the different size and kinds of blocks will add interest to the quilt.



I made a flickr gallery of some quilts made with these kind of blocks here, the quilts are always so interesting.

Tonight I took one of the bundles and played. These blocks are really fun to make. There are no rules, just start with a square or rectangle, cut it, add a strip of any size, press, cut again, add again. You can stop at a plus or carry on to make an asterisk.



Tomorrow, if the snow stops - it has been a bit of a storm today - I will address all the envelops and mail all those bundles. I am already late in making all these decisions and sending the fabric out - luckily the group does not mind. Now I can't wait to see the blocks that come back, and I am glad to be done with all this planning and deciding.

I am going to link this post to the Thursday Think Tank, which is being guest hosted this week by Sandi at Piecemeal Quilts who will be sharing ideas for Thanksgiving etiquette. By the way, I get to be one of the guest hosts for the holiday season of the Thursday Think Tank - my day is November 29 and I will be sharing some ideas for gifts for tweens, teens and twenties.


You can link up any post this week which contains some creative thinking, and also check out the ideas  everyone else shares too.

Best,

Leanne

Quilting Bees

Quilting Bees are messy!

But I made some nice blocks:




Those two are for the Aqua and Orange Bee - I get to use these amazing colours when it is my turn! We used the Quilt Dad tutorial for these (it is here).

And this one is for my other bee, the Twelve Month Quilting Bee:



The tutorial for this block is here, by Elizabeth Hartman from ohfransson! I have wanted to try this block  for a long time so it was great to have the chance. It is a much harder block to do than I thought, with a fair bit of planning along the way but the result is well worth it.

These are off to Melissa tomorrow. I wonder what blocks I will get to do next month, the surprise is another fun part of being in a quilting bee.

Best,

Leanne