Scraptastic Tuesday - a small list to keep me focused

First, I wanted to remind you to please plan to join Nicky, from Mrs. Sew and Sow, and I next Tuesday for the Scraptastic Tuesday link up. The link is open for a week on the second Tuesday of the month. You can link once with a project either in progress or completed or your thoughts on how to tame your scrap mountain - we are looking for inspiration to keep using our scraps up. You can link with a blog post, an instagram photo or a Flickr photo and your link is your entry into the random draw for great sponsored prizes.

Next, I have to confess to not using up many scraps in the last two weeks, but instead to having made several more as I made my bee blocks and an orange quilt that I should be able to show you soon. In truth, I have not been sewing as much as I would like either.

So instead I thought I would use today to list some of my scrap projects that I plan to work on over the busy months of summer. You have seen these all before, but I am hoping a list will keep me committed to them until they are done.



Liberty nine patches. These are easy and a good stress reducing project. If I added a bunch of white fabric to the Liberty box, I could also finish the blocks from Nicky's scrappy sampler with the same scraps.



Magenta courthouse steps. This quilt top needs 9 or 10 more blocks and although it began with some fat quarters, they have long since been used up. Now, I am completing the quilt with bits and pieces, some scraps and some newer fabric pieces.  This quilt is also on my Q2 FAL list and it might be possible to just get the whole thing finished by the end of June.



Colourful blobs. I need a lot more of these to finish the project I started making them for, and also for the new projects that are forming in my mind using more of them. In fact I could just keep making blobs until the scraps in each colour ran out as the blobs can be cut and used in so many ways.

I'm going to stop for now as I have to confess that I have a project or ten that I want to also start this summer, we shall see how that goes. But I am also hoping that by setting them out here, I will be able to report these three finished this summer too.

What are you working on or hoping to work on with your scraps? Consider linking up next Tuesday to show us.

Best,

Leanne

May Fresh Sewing Day

It's been a while since I shared my month's work over at Fresh Sewing Day which my friend Lynne from Lily's Quilts hosts. This month I finished Dance - you can read more about her here, with a tutorial too. And that photo - with Butch on the left and Sundance on the right, both still very much kittens at heart but the size of small lions now - hit Flickr Explore and is now my second most viewed ever photo.



I finished Winter, and she was also on my Q2 FAL List. You can read more about her here.



I made a Big Patchwork Tote, pattern by Ayumi in Krista's Book Make It, Take It. I took this bag to Quilt Market in Minneapolis and had a great time there, there is a bit about my bag and the trip here.



I finished up Diane's blocks for Bee Sewcial. She asked for curved shapes with sliver of black. I posted about these blocks here.



I also finished Marci's block for Bee Sewcial. She asked for houses, and I gave her apartments - more here.



And I got to show off HeartBEEts, which is a group quilt by the members of Bee Sewcial for Marci and her new baby. There is a lot more about HeartBEEts here.

It turns out that May was very productive at my house after all.

There will be a lot of inspiring posts linked up over at Lynne's blog, Lily's Quilts, go and check them out here, and I hope you join in too.

Best,

Leanne

Bee Sewcial - May Block

There is my May Bee Sewcial block for Marci, who blogs at Marci Girl Designs - dense urban apartment dwellings. The block is about 13" by 26".

In Bee Sewcial the Queen Bee gives us an inspiration and a colour palette and the idea is that one will be inspired and work from that. We are to make two 12.5" blocks or an equivalent and Marci was fine with one big block. The only other limit is that the fabrics must be solids. Marci gave us a lot of inspiration, including a song (go here, it good), a pinboard, and said:

"I would like a quilt that will eventually look like a town scape, houses, rolling hills, trees just all kinda improv style and not a distinct house sitting on a background. So maybe a town that is viewed from a distance up in the air. Abstract. You can make a block with lots of little houses, you just shouldn't be able to see the fine details like windows and shutters. Or you could make rolling hills or streets, or funky little trees from a distance."



She encouraged us to sketch first and then work from the sketch, but not being tied to the sketch as we go. As others in the bee focused on houses and hills, I kept looking at the apartment towers I see on the way to work each day, and the idea that apartments are also all little boxes that all look the same solidified in my head. I seldom sketch quilt designs, but one day at my desk I made this one.

Luckily, Marci approved of the dense urban scene, as it is not quite in keeping with her instructions.



After thinking about the sketch for many days, I set to work yesterday. I worked without my ruler which felt very counter intuitive given that my block was all straight lines of buildings. Marci asked for bright colours, so I picked some really saturated and happy colours and here is where I started.



As is my usual process, I had very little plan as to how I might put this bloc together. I laid out some colours and started to think about having to make the parts behind the front buildings along with the buildings.



The biggest challenge was this spot. It was caused by the fact that I did not plan ahead and I made the centre building before I thought about how to put the buildings behind in place. Then I did not want to cut the main building to piece in those background bits. Today I will get out some matching threads and carefully add a couple of hand stitches to those green and red folded corners to finish them off.



I laid it out as I went. I think most every seam was sewn at least 2 if not 4 times, there was plenty of seam ripping required to get this the way I wanted. I'm not complaining, it was fun and a great learning experience. And it was liberating to ignore the rulers for the process too.



I love how this block turned out, and I'm sure Marci, who loves purple, would be living in that trendy purple high rise up front, or maybe the purple building up the hill in the background. I worry a little that this block might be a bit too representational than the original instructions that emphasized being abstract, but it is where the inspiration took me this time.

You can see some of the other blocks here at the Bee Sewcial flickr page or check us out on instagram at #beesewcial -  this is a bee full of talented people.

Today I have an orange quilt to quilt, I hope that the day gives me time to do just that.

Best,

Leanne

if you were shopping... #37

Welcome to if you're shopping.... On Fridays - late this week, it's Saturday morning - I share news from my sponsors, in case you want to do a little shopping, or even window shopping, this weekend.

Sew Sisters Quilt Shop has is starting a Kaffe Club. They also have new Kaffe Fassett yardage in stock.

At the Fat Quarter Shop, Cotton + Steel's Tinsel in stock now - and Spellbound too.

This weekend, use the promo code SUMMER for an extra discount off anything at Green Fairy Quilts 

This week's 20% off feature bundle at Mad about Patchwork is this lovely bundle called Confetti. It's on sale until Sunday night.

Oakshott Fabrics has beautiful Sample Swatches which come with a £5 Gift Voucher and have special shipping rates.

Fabric Spark has just received a bunch of slightly older favourite fabrics and listed them on sale.

Fluffy Sheep Quilting some adorable new fabrics, especially this one - Festival Forest Sweater Weather.

Sew Me a Song has beautiful bundles, including this bundle of many fat eights of low volume fabrics.

Enjoy your weekend!

Best,

Leanne

HeartBEEts - Ta Da! - a Bee Sewcial Baby Quilt

Let me tell you about HeartBEEts. She is a baby quilt that the members of Bee Sewcial made for another member, Marci, who has just had a new baby girl. Marci blogs at Marci Girl Designs. Now that she is safely in Marci's hands, I can tell you all about her.

A bunch of us met up at QuiltCon in February, including Marci. She let us know that the baby she was expecting was a girl and that she was into pink for baby things. The rest of us decided to make her a surprise baby quilt, and in keeping with the Bee Sewcial way, the theme/inspiration was hearts and the colour was pink and low volume. Our one deviation from the usual Bee Sewcial rules was to use prints, not just solids.

Stephanie, who blogs at Spontaneous Threads collected the blocks and pieced the top. Debbie, who blogs at A Quilter's Table created the back, with a block addition from Stephanie. I did the quilting and binding.



This block was made by Hillary, who blogs at Entropy Always Wins. I adore this block, and I have to say I was glad of the industrial strength longarm machine as I was quilting it - all those seams really gave my machine a workout thumping through them.



This block was made by Melissa, who blogs at We Shall Sew.



This one was made by Diane, who blogs at Random thoughts... do or "di".



This block was made by Kari, who blogs at Craft Happy.



This block was made by Felicity, who blogs at Felicity Quilts.



This block was also made by Diane, who blogs at Random thoughts... do or "di".



This block was made by Stephanie, who blogs at Spontaneous Threads. She made a similar one that is part of the back.



Stephanie also added this tiny little grey heart. She cautioned me not to sew through it.



The wonder of this tiny little heart is better understood when light (like the flash of a camera) shines on it. It is made from nano particle fabric and it shines that light right back at you. You can read more about Stephanie's nano particle adventures here.



I did not know about the magic of this little heart when I was quilting and photographing the quilt and I generally turn the flash off on my camera. Here is the one whole quilt picture I have with the little heart shining, it is before the quilt had a wash and dry. That little heart sure holds its own with the bigger ones!



This block was made by me.



Here it is before quilting. I used a lovely free pattern from Pieced by Number, go here. I also pulled out a bunch of my hand screened fabrics from Karen Lewis Textiles for the heart. And I could not resist using the bird and children print from the Wee Wanderer collection by Sarah Jane as the background.



This is the other block I made.



You can see it a bit better here. It is improv in straight lines, a bit asymmetrical and quirky.



Not surprisingly, I quilted this quilt with unevenly spaced straightish lines. I used a light pink Aurifil 50wt thread for the top and the bottom.



It's hard to see but the light pink thread gives the whole quilt just a little bit more warmth. I think by now you might have guessed how much I love this little quilt and I know Marci loves it too.



Debbie, from A Quilter's Table designed and pieced the back, with a block from Stephanie added in. I am in love with this back.

You can also see that I bound it with the left overs after trimming of the print on the side of the back. To longarm quilt, one needs the back to have 6 - 8" extra on all sides, and that turned out to provide the perfect binding fabric for this quilt. By the way, HeartBEEts is about 45 - 48" square (I forgot to make a note of the exact size, oops.)

I had to show you another photo of the back. It really is just the other front. This photo is before the quilt was trimmed or washed and you can just sort of see the many low volume white prints that Debbie used.



The label says it all, this was such a fun project to make for a brand new baby. The members of Bee Sewcial were all involved in each step of making this quilt - there was even a lot of thought and discussion about how to name her. Our newest member, Karen, who blogs at CapitolaQuilter joined too late to make a block but helped with the naming and other decisions as we went.



And I had to show you the whole quilt again, the members of the bee did such a great job creating this quilt. I am honoured to be part of such a creative and generous group of women.

Best,

Leanne