Sew Modern Bee Blocks

                                                                                    

 

 March Block

April Block

I finally got caught up on my Sew Modern Bee Blocks. Waking up in the middle of the night from a bad dream helps with this.  The great thing about bees is that you get to try blocks you would not normally make. The bad part is, I'm not sure if I do the blocks proper justice not having done them before. Both this bee and my Bee Beautiful group have increased my repertoire of blocks to make ; the list keeps getting longer. May is the last month for this bee and then I am going to take a break from Beeing. I would like to start figuring out what quilts I want to make for my guild's quilt show next year. I also have a few quilts that need to be bound.

Design Wall Monday

 

I have started receiving my February blocks from my Sew Modern bee. They are bright and cheery to be receiving when we have had snow, ice and rain of late. I love all of the triangles.  See what others have put up for Design Wall Monday.

Sew Modern

I am not necessarily sure I would consider myself Sew Modern, but I did want to join a group with Canadian quilters. I have enjoyed the blocks so far, and have learned a lot from each one of them. February is my month for the bee and surprise, surprise I decided on a rainbow quilt. I  love making rainbow quilts for kids and decided I needed one too. I have also been trying to make more things with half square triangles. I found this free pattern from Lecien and thought it would work well. I am having my group do the other squares and I will make the centre medallion. Here is my purple block :

 

I finished my January Sew Modern Bee last week for Jennifer. I had not tried this method before for making these stars but I liked it. She also asked us to make a smaller block with the left over triangles which I thought was a great idea.

 It will be exciting again to start receiving things in the mail.  I love all the surprises quilting brings!

Arch nemesis

 

This block more commonly known as the asterisk block is my arch nemesis. It is the October block, for my Sew Modern Quilt Bee. We were given fabric to make 2 of them. The first time I tried the block I had left the selvage end on because I was trying to use the least amount of fabric possible because the scraps were asked to be returned. Well, I  had not left enough of the end and the selvage would have become part of the block. So then I cut off the selvage end and then tried it a second time. Still not enough. Set it aside and worked on my quilts that had to go to the quilter's. Picked it up for a 3 time, found some other instructions for it and managed to struggle through. Last week, started working on the second one.  Got busy and picked it up again on the weekend to finish. Can't find part of the fabric. Look everywhere. All my quilting bee stuff is organized together so I knew it had to be in my quilting room. Still can't find it. Ask my daughter who is a fabric hoarder. No, she did not take it. Then my son pipes up, are you looking for a green piece? Yes, I say. Well, it turns out he had taken it to use to make a net for his air hockey table. My husband found the fabric on the floor all  covered in tape, assumed it was garbage and through it out! So short story long, that's how the asterisk block became my arch nemesis.

I am hoping to rectify this tonight as I am participating in the Friday Night Sew-In. I will finally finish the long saga of the asterisk block and hopefully get to work on some of my other bee blocks.

Buzzing Bees

As part of Amy's One Thing, One Week Challenge, I said I would get my bee blocks done. They have been buzzing around me for a bit. I was able to get all 3 of them done.

August Bee Beautiful

September Bee Beautiful

September Sew Modern

I am very happy to have these done. Now, I need to get my fabric kits ready for October. It is my month for the Bee Beautiful group.

Friday Night Sew-In

I decided to play catch up with my Friday Night Sew-In. I must admit I was very tempted to start some new projects.

I did my Bee Blocks for the Sew Modern Bee. Alison wanted a pinwheel quilt for her son. I love the fabrics she sent us.

I also got Block 9 done for my Star Sampler Quilt Along. I am hoping to get the last 3 done this weekend.

Empty Quilt Syndrome

All these quilts have been given away in the past couple of months. I have no more quilts waiting to be given away. Some of them I have had for a bit. I am nervous about mailing quilts so I waited until they could be hand delivered. One of the nicest compliments I have had is when I went to a friend's house and saw the quilt I made for her all crumpled up on the couch. You could tell it was being used. I have only one quilt top waiting to decide if I am going to put a border on it and one at the quilter's. What is a girl to do? I guess it is time to get back to quilting and make some more quilts. The house does seem a bit emptier without them around.

This is my block I made for the July Sew Modern Bee. Nicole wanted circles. She said the blocks would be used to make baby quilts, so circles made me think of snowmen, one of my favourite things. I have never made circles before and it was fun to try out a couple of new techniques.

One Thing, One Week Challenge Completed!

I was able to complete my One Thing, One Week Challenge hosted by Amy. I wanted to get my Bee Blocks for July done.

These are for Natalie in my Bee Beautiful group. The spiderwebs bring back memories of my summer last year working on spiderwebs for the Halloween block swap. I also finished my Sew Modern Bee block for Nicole. She wanted circles and gave us some inspirational photos to look at. She wants it to be a surprise in the mail for her, so I cannot show a photo right now.

My husband is very happy because it means I am actually going to have time to spend with him tomorrow for our anniversary! Amy is linking up to others who have met the challenge. Enjoy and take a peek!

Lost Love

or Love Lost? I have not been watching Lost for a while. I realized it was getting too intense to be half watching it while quilting. It is great for me however while binding which I have been frantically working on this weekend. I am trying to finish up for the PHD Challenge and hopefully will be able to show you on the 30th.

 In the meantime I have been trying to get caught up on my Bee Blocks.  Here is the June one for Sew Modern Bee.

My May tulip for Bee Beautiful is done except for the leaf. Then I will get to play with some amazing Neptune for Julie and make some circles for Nicole.

I just barely  got my Jelly Roll Sampler Quilt Bloc done last week

I will be happy when July 1st comes around. Canada's birthday, and I can start on new projects. I committed myself to working on my PHD and I have done really well at sticking to it. The only thing is I think I have got the PHD bug and there are a few more quilts I want to finish up.

Progressing nicely

Just finished a nice long weekend here in Canada. Gorgeous, hot weather and lots of family to see. It has been a couple of weeks since I had to chance to quilt, so I took a bit of time here and there to get some things finished.

Here is Block 6 for the Jelly Roll Sampler Quilt Along.  I am halfway done now, and getting excited. It is going to be a beautiful quilt for me.

Here is my finally finished block for my Sew Modern Bee. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to make with it. This block is called Peppermint Spinners from Quilter's Cache.

I finally figured out what to do with my Mystery Quilt that I talked about in this post. All of these individual strips were suppose to be scrappy. Part of my problem with the quilt was that I would have to sew all of the squares, cut them up into little scraps and then try to reorganize them back into a square. For me, I find this harder to do with the little bits of time I have. I saw a quilt a few days ago that had this organized scrappy look, and I decided to try it out. I really like it. Now, I can sew a couple of squares at a time and not have to work about losing the little strips.

I also got some more work done on my snowman quilt. I might actually have a winter quilt this year. To celebrate all I got done, I started on a new secret project that I can't show you right now (I have always wanted to say that), but will in a couple of weeks.

I hope you are all doing well. I have not had much time to check out Amy's Blogger Quilt Festival but I hope to see more this week.

Spring to Finish Halfway Point

1. Remove wallpaper from my hallway. DONE
2. Decorate my dining room.
3. Get rid of some toys and books.
4. Organize my children's clothing. HALF DONE
5. Get a label on my friend's quilt and give it to her.
6. Pick a pattern for my sister's quilt. DONE
7. Finish my mom's quilt top. DONE
8. Finish my zig zag quilt top.
9. Put together my guild blocks into a table runner.
10. Quilt my tulip table runner.

It is the halfway point for the Spring to Finish challenge and I have 3 1/2 things done. I am hoping to get a few more done this week, so hopefully I will have a good finish.

I managed to get my Jelly Roll Sampler Block done in the nick of time. I like how it turned out but I had a few mistakes with the cutting. I have also finally figured out what I want to do for my Sew Modern Bee. It involves pinwheels, my new favourite thing. I should have it done in the next couple of days.

Bee Sting

Okay, so for now (except for finishing up my guild's swap) I am all done swapping. You would think that would mean taking a break, right? Of course not! I am in the Bee Beautiful bee and I am absolutely loving it. It has been so much fun to be in a bee with some old friends, or should I say long-time friends, and making some new ones. The only thing I feel badly about it is that I am the only Canadian in the group, so it takes longer for my fabric to come, which means that I start later than everyone else and of course, it also takes longer for the finished block to arrive.

The Bee Beautiful women are truly beautiful and have been so wonderful that I decided that I wanted to be in another bee. I had talked to Ariane about starting a bee for Canadian quilters (there are always less of us) and then I found the Quilting Bee Blocks group on flickr . It has a list of bees looking for people. I looked through the list and there was a Canadian one looking for a few more members. I joined the Sew Modern Bee, and so did Ariane, and Sarah. Now we have 12 members and are starting the bee in May.

I guess I have been stung by a couple of bees.I may also have been stung by the quilt a long as well. I'll let you know next week. It all depends on how much time I have or think I have, which is always less than I really do.