Things came to a crunch this week with some very over due Bee blocks that could no longer be ignored, no matter how hard I tried.

One of the things I love about doing quilting Bees is that you are challenged, every month, to make different blocks and for me it is a good way to try new, non paper piecing stuff.   This month’s challenges included…

This block is 12 1/2 inches square and was requested as part of the ScrapBeelicious Bee.  When I first looked at the pattern I was a little overwhelmed, but I cut the squares as I was cutting fabric for another quilt and chain piecing made the process less daunting.

The pattern, Star Value by Happy Quilting, is perfect for a Bee, because you do not want to be making a whole quilt of these suckers.  The free tutorial also has the calculations to make the block in different sizes from 12 inches up to 28 inches.

Surprisingly, I had a much more harrowing experience making these Bee blocks…

The ScrapBeelicious  January block (yes yes I am very very late with this one) challenged us to make the Ann Marie Horner’s Feather Blocks…

For some reason these were the blocks I had to unpick the most.  The center grey spine of the feather was too short and I struggled with getting the pattern pieces to align.  In the end I just wanted to make a paper piecing pattern to make this sucker… it would have been so much easier!

The last lot of Bee blocks for this week were a simple and fun….

My February do.Good.Stitches Block was the Starflower block by Ellison Lane. This block was so easy and the pattern makes two blocks at a time… genius!

So I have now done my quota of half square triangles (HST) for the month. For the rest of the month I am only tackling those suckers via paper piecing.

This week my quilting life has been full of just one block – a paper pieced X block of varying sizes.

I made the original block pattern, a 4 inch x 4 inch block,  for the next border on the PMQG medallion quilt.

I used the  PMQG Medallion Border paper piecing pattern to make the border for the group medallion which is taking full advantage of the fabulous Botanics range by Carolyn Friedlander.

Don’t you just love the center Dresden flower – my clever fellow PMQG officer, Kelly of Blue Bird Sews made it.

After finishing the first 24 X blocks for the Guild Medallion I turned around and did another 48 X blocks to make the border on my Medallion….

Yep you read right… I had to make two lots of cross blocks to get my border done, because I did not measure my paper piecing pattern before I started sewing.  My printer had “scaled to fit” my first set of block so they were just slightly smaller than 4 inches.  Lesson for the day:  always measure your printed pattern before you start work.

For some unknown reason I then thought “wow wouldn’t be fun to try a larger cross with some Lizzy House fabrics” and in a moment of insanity started making these blocks…

I was at least smart enough to blow the pattern up to 6 x 6 inches and I am liking how this quilt is starting to look.  You can find the pattern for the larger crosses here…  Cross block pattern.

Believe it or not I am contemplating adding some smaller 4 x 4 blocks to my Constellation quilt to bring a nice variety to the top.  If I do not get too sick of these blocks, I will have a wip update in a couple of weeks.

First up a little bit of background before I show you what I am playing with this week….  Last week I gave a presentation on Playing with Color in quilting to the Portland Modern Quilt Guild.  I talked a little about color theory and a lot about the colour schemes that quilters can borrow from the art based theory, as well as ones we have come up with on our own (like Low Volume).   During the presentation I also talked about ‘neutrals’, those fun, versatile colours that play nice with nearly every colour they meet.  It was during this part of the presentation that this weeks challenge presented itself…

So I was talking about the standard neutrals – white, cream, grey, brown and of course navy blue, which is my favorite neutral…though it is not really an official neutral.  I rambled on about how navy is my response to my personal aversion to black as a neutral.  I find black harsh and though it gives great contrast, I do not tend to use it unless I absolutely have to and always opt for navy or dark grey instead.   I will, on occasion, condescend to use black and white prints but never straight black.

As I was making these statements I realised that I should not be making such a harsh judgement on black without at least giving it a go.

So I choose a pattern and went to work…

I went with the traditional Hunters Star block and used the paper piecing pattern by Quilters Cache.  It seemed like the perfect pattern to make use of the high contrast of my colour choices.

The block pieces join together to make these wonderful stars… and we all know how I feel about stars!   When you add a number of blocks together you get to see the bigger pattern which is stunning.

I have to admit I am thrilled with how this “experiment” turned out.  I think because I am using scraps and different blacks, the colour is not quite as harsh as a solid black, and the blue just seems to pop off the quilt.

So going forward I am not saying I will be abandoning navy blue any time soon but I may give black more than a fleeting glance next time I am pulling fabric.  So is this aversion to black just me or do others share my feelings?  Have you used it in any of your quilts?

As it is Wednesday I am linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday…

This week Paper Piecing Monday was usurpered by Portland Modern Quilt Guild’s Charity Sew Day.. sorry.  I have decided on a new paper pieced quilt and have designed the first block for it, but have not had a chance to test the pattern… but I promise it will be ready for next week.

In the meantime I thought I would share some of the fun of yesterday…  where a group of PMQG members took over one of the class rooms at Modern Domestic for the day and made quilt tops.

We had a collection of fat quarters and fat eighths left over from the Riley Blake challenge and our challenge was to make some quick and easy quilt tops out of them. Rachel from 2nd Avenue Studios and I spearheaded this adventure and we quickly settled on a modified rail fence and three of the fabrics from the Challenge – the yellow dot, the navy check and the grey stripe.

We supplemented the Riley Blake with some other graphic prints in our colour way, all boy appropriate, as our Charity needs teen boy quilts (yes I am the one that added the Pearl Bracelets!).

The pattern is ridiculously easy and very very effective.  In a nutshell we…

1.  Cut a generous nine-inch strip of our chosen fabrics…

2.  Cut our nine inch strips into sections of 5 inch, 3 1/2 inch and 1 1/2 inch pieces.  We made sure we had a variety of each colour in ever size.

3.  Selected the strips for our block making sure there was one of each colour… then using a scant 1/4 inch seam we sewed the pieces together to get our finished 9 x 9 inch block.

You can easily build in some wiggle room with this block by cutting your fabric strips from your yardage at 9 1/4 inches wide (it is a little harder with fat eights, but with the fat quarter cuts we cut 9 1/4 inches from the 21 inch width).

If you are struggling to get a scant 1/4 seam allowance you can add some wiggle room the other way, by cutting 5 1/4 inch or 3 3/4 inch pieces… and then trim the finished block as needed down to 9 x 9 inches.

And viola you have a fun, easy but striking quilt top.

Thanks to everyone’s efforts we managed to get two tops finished yesterday… in between the socializing, laughing and cake eating.  Not a bad way to spend a Monday I must admit.

Paper piecing Monday is back this week, after a flu induced hiatus, with another house block…

This 10 x 10 inch paper pieced block was a not as complex as my last block… I am getting better at this house designing thing.  I simplified some of it to make sure that I was not dealing with too many little bits.

The roof construction was the only fiddly bit for me.  You can find the paper piecing pattern here….WQ house Block 2.

More houses next week… and I also include a wip with the blocks done so far.

I am desperately playing catch up on my Bee blocks and other projects that have been sitting around too long.

First up I have caught up on my Do.good.stitches blocks which included this fun ditty…

A wonderful wonky pin wheel.  The pattern is from Greenleaf Goods who have a great tutorial on their site.  It was a fabulous scrap buster and I am looking forward to doing my own version.

The other do.Good.stitches block that I have just finished up is the fabulous Granny Square block by Blue Elephant Stitches.

I have made this block a couple of times but love the instructions that my fellow Bee member added… Heather told us to make the white squares extra long… we added 3/4 of an inch to the pattern.  This extra wiggle room makes trimming the block so much easier than the original pattern.

We also used 3 inch blocks instead of 2 1/2 inch squares and I am now fired up to use some of my 3 inch square scraps to make more of these blocks.  But first I have to finish my original Granny Square quilt.

My Granny Square quilt is still on my 2014 To Do list but this week I did make some progress on the list … I am determined to finish my Denyse Schmidt Zakka flower quilt.  I have made the last of the blocks…

And now I am onto sashing.  I am hoping to have the top done for a Finish Friday… really hoping.

And of course because it is Wednesday I am linking up to Lee at Freshly Pieced..

If you follow me on Pintrest you will know that I have been obsessed this past week with finishing my orange and brown quilt top.  I got a bee in my bonnet and could not let it go, even though I had other pressing quilts with deadlines.

The quilt started life some months ago as this simple block – you can find the free paper piecing pattern link on my original post.   So over the last week I have feverishly been making blocks….sew, iron, trim repeat.

With scrap quilting there is not a lot of opportunities to chain piece usually but with this project I found myself chain piecing a bit.  First I chain pieced an orange block to a brown block and then I match up those units and chain pieced the blocks together.  It worked wonderfully well and I used so much less thread.   Eventually it all came together to make this…

I love the meta pattern this block creates…and I extra love the scrappy feel to the quilt.  The splashes of white and the variation in the tones of both the orange and brown make the top really sing.

The paper pattern makes for pretty accurate piecing so that there is a lovely crispness to the points and joins.

Now all I have to do is rip the paper off, baste, quilt and bind it.  I already have a backing fabric chosen and have a name picked out.  This is my Jaffa quilt.. .named after a fabulous Aussie chocolate orange lolly/sweet/candy.

This week I have been working on doing some more Monaluna block for the PMQG, this time I made a handful of Ohio Stars in the new Haven Range.

For the block I used the wonderful tutorial by Tessa at The Sewing Chick.   Easy peasy!

I actually got quite a production line going….

Okay I admit it I got a little carried away…

But these fabrics are too much fun to not play with…

right…

I must admit I made more of these, but this is a nice selection that really highlight the lovely fabrics.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been doing some pattern testing for the fabulous Sara at Knottygnome.  The block I have been playing with is called Cross Stitch Sparkle…

It is a block made up of half square triangles, lots and lots of HST’s.  When I got the pattern I was umming and ahhing about what colours to do and what scraps to use… you know my usual style.  In the end I decided to do something completely different for me and go with solids.

I used just Kona for the white fabric but I really raided my solids stash for the rest – there is Kona and Couture Cotton and Bella Solids and who knows what else in this block.

With Sara’s pattern she gives directions on two different ways to make HST’s.  I went with the version that makes 2 at a time because I wanted the colour variety and I was not making a huge quilt.

Sara’s other directions make 8 HST’s at a time and would be very handy if you were making a full quilt out of this pattern.  Each block is 18 inches square so I made 4 blocks and called it good…

I now have a fabulous wall hanging or baby quilt…. I am not sure which one it is yet!   Sara’s pattern goes live next week on her website if you are interested.  The block is really easy and the resulting quilt top is striking.

I am linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday.

For today’s Paper Piecing Monday block I did something a little different.  The block still uses the simple square block, but only one…

..and yes kitties are still involved.  It follows the rules of the other vintage blocks – 9 patch of four-inch blocks blah blah blah…

The components of the block are…one (1)  WQ Simple square block, four (4) Triangle blocks and four (4) Starpoint component blocks.  Just click on the links to get the PDF of the patterns.

So what did I do different…. I blew this block up to make a 21 inch block.

As the local hospital was now requesting 42 inch square quilts, I thought this would be a great way to make a quick and easy baby quilt… and I was right.

My quilt is unbound, but you get the idea.  Simple pattern, bright solids and you have an easy quilt.  The pattern components are the same but just 7 inches instead of 4…XL Triangle component and XL Star component and of course XL Simple Square component.

I am still playing catch up… and today’s work in progress is another project that was on my design wall before we headed to Australia… to give you a hint it all started with this…

Yep I have been making more curved blocks!  It is not my fault really…you see after cutting out this quilt (you can read about the original crazy here..) I realised I had a whole collection of pink/purple quarter circles… what is a girl to do but make more blocks out of the scraps.

So I made some Drunkard paths like this…

Which became blocks like this…

So my design wall was looking like this…

I played a little with proportions on this block, making the black and white background blocks larger than the background blocks of the previous quilt.  I think the solid circles hold their own well against the scrappy.

I also discovered that the smaller the circles get the harder the curved sewing becomes. This curved block is 11 inches finished, with the full circle being 8 inches in diameter.

Now of course I have a pile of black and white quarter circles, which are going to  become there own quilt… yes it is a rabbit hole of curves but I already have a cunning plan for the latest scraps… I just need the time to implement it!

As it is Wednesday I am linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced…

In a moment of crazy at the end of last year I decided that I would not start any new projects in January or February this year.  I have so many wips and unfinished quilt tops I thought I needed to do something to clear the backlog.  This “resolution” saw me pulling out some old unfinished blocks this week and getting this quilt top done…

I actually started making these blocks in March of last year.   I had made a 4 inch paper pieced version of this block for the PMQG medallion and then blew the pattern up to 6 1/2 inches to play with. There is a link on my original post to the free paper piecing pattern in two sizes (4 and 6 inch) in you are interested.

So this week I made a pile more blocks and this morning finally got them all wrangled into a top.

The quilt uses the wonderful Constellation range by designer Lizzy House.  I love the fun bright fabrics that Lizzy makes and though I was late to discovering her fabrics, I have been hoarding and using them for a couple of years.  I do not think there is a quilt I have made in the last year or so that has not had Pearl Bracelets in it somewhere.

This range is all about stars and fun Constellations, but you could easily use this pattern in any fabric range…the trick is to make sure you have a nice contrast in your blocks and that you embrace the light and dark fabrics from the range.

To really up the contrast with this top I also pulled in some solid white fabric as well as the white on white Pearl Bracelets.  I also did not shy away from adding a touch of red/purple.  One of the fabrics in the line had a touch of this colour and I thought I would embrace it…just a little.  I used the design rule of three and added three blocks with the purple.

I just love how the quilt seems to sparkle and your eyes are forced to move around the top.    Now all that is left for me to do is remove the paper and quilt this sucker up!

I am linking up today to Crazy Mom Quilts Friday Finishes.

A couple of weeks ago, at one of our Guild Sew Days I got an amazing burst of creative energy.  It all started with the fabulous Bill Volkening and his amazing collection of vintage New York Beauty quilts.  Bill is a quilt collector extraordinaire and a collection of his 1970’s quilt hung at QuiltCon last week.

Anyway Bill was showing some of us the roughs for a new book he has done which highlights his amazing collection of New York Beauty quilts from the 1850’s through to modern.  I had never seen such an awe inspiring collection of quilts and I was immediately drawn to the wonderful patterns that were used to make them.  If you are interested in seeing what I am talking about Bill has a fun slide show of 30 of his New York beauties up on line HERE.

Having just conquered my fear of curved piecing I thought I had to give this block a go, just to see if I could do it.  The second part of the inspiration came about 20 minutes later when a friend from PMQG gave me the most amazing gift… a tin of Mirror Ball fat quarters.  It seems Tracey had bought the tin years ago, before I had discovered the magic of Mirror Ball and not used it…she had seen my love of Mirror Ball first hand at the PMQG retreat (I may have drooled over her fabric) and decided to gift me her tin of magic.  I was at first speechless and a little teary.  It was such a generous gift and I do LOVE Mirror Ball.  Anyway a long story short while I was petting my new fabric I stumbled across this colour scheme…

…and my new project/obsession was born.  So this week I have been making New York Beauty blocks…

…lots of New York Beauty blocks.,..

I found some paper piecing patterns for blocks in my EQ7 program and I have been playing…

There has been lots of unpicking and learning but I am having fun.  I am not sure what final layout will be but for now I am just enjoying the fun of making these blocks. Each one is different…each one is unique…each one has sparkle in it.

I am linking up with Lee and Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday.

Yesterday was a public holiday here in the US and I fully embraced the good weather and took the day off…. so no paper piecing Monday this week.  Instead I wanted to share one of the paper piecing projects I have been working on for the last week or so…

I have been making butterfly blocks using Lizzy House fabric and tone-on-tone white scraps.   My obsession with making these blocks took seed when Lizzy’s new fabric line, Natural Histories came out and included this wonderful print…I had purchased a fabulous butterfly pattern a year or so ago from Juliet at Tartan Kiwi so I went to work making blocks.  The pattern, if you are interested, is only $2.50 and can be bought HERE.

The pattern is for a 5 inch butterfly and it takes four parts to make one block….

The more of these I have made the quicker the process has become.  There are some small bits to the pattern but nothing to complex… and I love the end result.

For my butterfly collection I also enlarged the pattern a little.  The yellow butterfly above is the 5 inch block and the green butterfly is what I got when I enlarged the pattern to take up the whole of a 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper.

My finished butterfly collection will have both block sizes and a fun array of colours.  I am using just Lizzy House fabric and trying not to repeat any fabric…and I love how they all look.

It has been a while since I posted any of the Do Good Stitches quilt blocks I have been making.  Every month I make blocks as part of this charity Bee and I love it.  I look forward to the first of the month when the new pattern is put up on our Flickr Group and I always eagerly make the blocks.  I love being challenged to make things that I would not usually make in colour schemes I may not necessarily think to put together.

Twice a year I get to be the Queen and set the block and in June I choose this block and colour scheme for my month….

The block is from a free pattern by Clover and Violet which they originally put up as part of a Christmas quilt they were making.  The colour tweaks I made changed how the finished block looks and made for a striking quilt top…

I love how the yellow strings make a grid pattern and the stars just pop.  Each of my fellow Do Good Bee members made two blocks, so there is so much variety in the stars, which I LOVE.

One of my favorite bits about being Queen Bee is getting to see all the blocks as they come in and ohh and ahh over the fabric used (I may have a bit of stash envy!).

When these blocks came in I absolutely fell in love with the Barbar fabric one of my fellow quilters used…

I have not seen this fabric before and am now obsessed with getting my hands on some.  It is so fabulous.  This quilt top is now awaiting quilting and binding and then it will go out into the world to Do Good!  I am Queen again in November and I have already started planning what block I am going to set.

This month I am the designated Quilter for my Do.Good.Stitches group….which means I get to set the block for the month that my other Bee members will be making.  My recent down time allowed me to paw over quilting books for hours uninterrupted which was a wonderful pleasure…and one of the patterns I found in an old quilting book was this block called Homeward Bound…

The finished block is 12 inches square (12 ½ unfinished) and is pretty simple to put together… all you need is…

Four (4) 3 ½ x 3 ½ squares for the outer fabric (grey)

Four (4) 3 ½ x 5 inch rectangles of the cross fabric (electric blue)

One (1) 3 ½ x 3 ½ inch square of the center fabric (light blue)

Four (4) 2 x 5 inch strips of sashing (white)

Four (4) 2 x 3 ½ strips of sashing (white).

You can see above how I pieced the block together in segments which made for quick and accurate assembly.  It is a fun block and I love the overall patterns these blocks are going to make…

I can not wait to get all the blocks in… it is going to be fun watching this quilt come together.

February is my month again to set the block for my Do Good Stitches Circle.  After setting some more precision based blocks for my last two times out, I decided to go the wonky route this month…

Yep I am asking my fellow Bee mates to make some wonky circles using a low volume palette.  To help out I am taking them (and you) step by step through the process to make two 12 inch blocks, starting with fabric selection.

For each block segment you will need two fabrics that have a small amount of contrast in them.   My colour scheme for this quilt is warm so I am using yellow, apricot, pink and a touch of grey.  For my fabric pull I went with predominantly cream and white background fabrics…

and for the contrasting fabric I choose more solid low volume fabrics…

For each block you need 8 different fabric – four light and four darker (note: you actually get two different finished blocks from this process).  I selected my eight fabrics in pairs, making sure that there was a contrast between each pair.  If you are not sure how the fabrics are reading against each other you can always use the black and white setting on your camera or phone to see how things look…

Now for the fun part…making the blocks.

Step 1.  Cut out eight 7 1/2 inch squares from each selected fabric…  Take two of your contrasting fabric squares and align them on top of each other.

Step 2.  Using your rotary cutter, cut a curve shape out of your squares… making sure that you leave at least an inch or so between your curve and the edge of your block.

Step 3.  Because you cut the two pieces of fabric together your background and center curve pieces should match exactly, no matter how wonky the curve you cut is.

Put together one of your fabrics as the background and the other as the center curve, making sure that they are as closely aligned on your cutting mat as you can get them.

Take a ruler and place it corner to corner across your block pieces.

Step 4.  Using a chalk pencil or Frixon marker, mark the center of the block, making sure your mark across both pieces of fabric.

Step 5.  Place your pieces of fabric face together, using the center mark to align the pieces…

Step 6.  Pin your two pieces of fabric together at this center point… your fabrics should still be face together and the bottom corners of the block should be roughly aligned.

Step 7.  To sew the pieces together, begin at the center part of the block… where you have pinned.  I put my machine foot down on pin, remove the pin, lower my needle manually and I am ready to sew.

Step 8.  Slowly sew from the center point out to one edge of the circle block, nudging fabric into alignment as you go.  The fabric may not want to lay flat and that is okay… just try to avoid sewing creases into the block.

Note:  I always sew with my machine in the needle down position, as it allows me to stop and adjust the block pieces as needed, without the risk of anything slipping or moving.

Step 9.  As you are sewing you will notice the block ends do not align, this is okay…do not panic.

Step 10.  When you have come to the end of the block, lift your needle, cut your thread and re-position your block back in the center, this time sewing the half of the block you have not done.

Step 11.  Your block segment is now ready for pressing… an important step because it will not be laying flat at all and you will have to iron it into submission…

Step 12.    When pressing my block I press my seams first from the back side of the block…… and then press the front side of the block, making sure that my curve is sitting as flat as I can get it.

Note:  When pressing the block I always use starch as it helps persuade the fabric to do what I need it to do.

Step 13.  The block piece is now ready to trim down 6 1/2 inches… you should have a bit of wiggle room with this block to trim a little off kilter, or with more background or more circle, depending on what you want to do.

Step 14.  Repeat the process until you have all segments of your blocks done.  For each colour pairing you make you will end up with two blocks….

For my Bee blocks I am asking for two (2) 12 1/2 inch unfinished blocks…. laid out with alternating light and dark circle pieces.

What I love about this colour palette is that it compliments the wonky so well… the mismatch, strange curves are subtle, there are no stark contrasts drawing your attention to the off kilter shapes.   I think this is going to be a charming quilt when done.

On a whim yesterday, I decided to play with a fabric die cut machine a friend has lent me.  I have never used one of these machines before but it seemed like a fun thing to use scraps on… so I grabbed some of my Cotton and Steel scraps and started cutting…

I decided to play with the Drunkards Path die that came with the machine, because it seemed like a great way to make these blocks, as the die cuts both pieces the perfect size….as opposed to the ruler method I have used in the past which leaves you with scrap pieces that are either to small or two big to use.

Anyway some ironing and cutting and an episode of Game of Thrones later I had a pile of curved block pieces….

Now these pieces make a 3 1/2 inch curved block for a 7 inch finished circle… in other words they are small.  The first thing I have learned with this project is that the smaller the curve you are trying to piece the harder it is to be accurate.  After some struggles aligning the pieces accurately I finally came up with a solution… glue basting.

Using my Sewline glue pen I glued around the seam line of one of the pieces of the block…

Placed the pieces together, using the notch to align and then carefully finger pressed the pieces together…

It worked like a charm and another episode of Game of Thrones later (we are just finishing up Season 5 so are a little behind)… I had a nice pile of glue basted…

Now all I have to do sew them… the glue basting will make chain piecing a breeze…

And I will have my block pieces done and ready for me to play with layout….

I am glad I decided to try the die cut curves… I have learned a lot including the fact that I like my curves big….much bigger than 4 inches….

So June has been a crazy month.  If you want to know what I have been up to you can check out this post by Living Room Real Estate… here is a hint… it involves fabric and kids…

But in between classes I have manged to get some sewing done… and have spent my precious free hours this week finishing my Quilts for Pulse quilt top (which I will blog this week I promise) and testing blocks for the Do Good Stitches bee.  This month I am setting the block for the group and I finally decided on this beauty…

The pattern is a free pattern from Cloud Nine called The Amsterdam Quilt.
The pattern is for 12 of these flowers but I need my Bee members to make just two of the flowers, so I have broken down the pattern to outline making just one flower so here goes…

For one flower you will need:

Two (2) x 4 1/2 inch squares for the top of the flower
One (1) x 4 1/2 inch by 8 1/2 inch rectangle for the bottom of the flower
Two (2) x 5 inch green squares for the leaves
Two (2) x 5 inch squares of white for the background
Two (2) x 2 1/2 inch white squares for the flower top
Two (2) x 2 inch white squares for the bottom edges of the flower
One (1) x 1 inch by 8 inch brown rectangle for the stem

Construction is pretty simple.  I started by marking a diagonal line down the middle of all the white squares using my trusty Frixon pen…

The squares will form the corners of the flower top and bottom.  You need to make sure that you are making a mirror image when you sew them to the flower top pieces and the bottom section…

I then sewed down my marked line..actually I sew just a hairs width on the outside of the line as it seems to give me a more accurate corner…

The top piece is then completed by sewing the two 4 1/2 inch squares together to create a white V in the center of the top…

I then used the same technique to sew the 2 inch squares to the bottom of the flower section..  Then onto the leaves, where you are making four (4) half square triangles using the green and white 5 inch squares…

There is quite a bit of wiggle room with the HST’s so you can easily trim them to  4 1/4 inches square.

You end up with four half square triangles that are then sewn together to make the leave sections..  The flower pieces then go together quickly and easily, as per the instruction sheet.

For my Bee flowers I have requested bright/jewel coloured flowers.  I want the flowers to be bright and happy and I have limited each flower to one busy novelty print and one more graphic colour as I did not want the flowers to be too insane… it was hard as I love my novelty prints but top and bottom busy novelty prints was just a little too much for even me!

I think this is going to be an fabulously bright and cheerful quilt when done.  I love how easy to make these blocks were…and just warning they are a little addictive.

This week I managed to get some Bee blocks done in between work and another cold.  I must admit I love making Bee blocks like this one…

Blocks that are more complex and use small 2 inch squares and lots of scrap pieces…. blocks that I would love to see a quilt made out of but do not have the patience to make 20 or 30 of them for a whole quilt.

These blocks are perfect for a quilting Bee because you share the quilting load… making two blocks each makes the quilt manageable.  This block is called Scrap Jar Star and you can find the free pattern on A Little Bit Biased’s website.  It was just what I needed to kick start my creativity this month.