Ocean Waves bee finish

This quilt began in May 2014 when I asked my bee mates from the We Bee With It Bee to make me blocks for an Ocean Waves quilt.

 

They came through with great blocks but I wanted to make more so it would be larger.  Needless to say, that mean that it sat for a bit before I was able to get to it!

 

A year a half later and here it is!  Philly MQG had our fall retreat which I was lucky enough to attend. I knew it was a perfect opportunity to get this quilt finished. I pieced it in advance and had the top ready to go for the retreat.

 

At the retreat I was able to baste it and start working on the quilting. (yay for high working tables at the hotel - saved my back the basting ache!)  The quilting was done on my domestic machine with a walking foot technique from Jacquie Ghering's Next Steps in Walking Foot Quilting.   I used my quick curve ruler to mark the curves on this and I'm so happy with the results. I think this next picture of the back shows it off the best.

 

I'm always amazed when bee quilts work so well. When I made my color requests, I asked for any shade of blue or blue green and look how fun these scrappy blocks are!

 

A huge thank you to the girls of the We Bee With It group. Sorry it took me so long to put these beautiful blocks together!!  

 

This quilt has already been sent to my sister who loves blue. I will admit I gave it to her a bit selfishly so I know that I can go visit it! The binding is a scrappy mix of blues that I had on hand.

 

 

Quilt stats:

Quilt name: Ocean Waves

Pattern: none, used HSTs of the same size

Fabrics: scrappy mix
Finished size: 72"x 60"

Finished: November 2015

Queen bee this month

I am the queen bee at We Bee With It this month. I've asked my bee mates to help me make an Ocean Waves quilt in shades of blue. These were my sample blocks:

I used triangulations to help make my HST's. But because I'm a dolt when it comes to math I accidentally used the wrong size!  As a result, my HST's trimmed up to 3" and my unfinished block is 10.5".  A weird size, but I'm sure it will work in the quilt! I'm excited to see everyone's blocks.

finished blocks and completed April goal!

I finished my blocks for my friend Julie aka Jaybird Quilts. If you haven't heard of her project, she's putting together a quilt for her huppa for her upcoming wedding! I'm not thrilled with how my points came together. I always forget how problems multiply when you work tiny. But, these blocks are only 6" tall so unless someone is examining it, it shouldn't be a problem! If you would like to make a block, the details are on her blog.

And I finished my April Goal for A Lovely Year of finishes.  My April Goal was to determine how I was going to put together my tutorial for my month as bee queen. I had some mistakes, but I've got my plan all together. Here are the two demo blocks I did.

I'm really excited to make more of these!

We Bee With It blocks for February

I finished my bee blocks for February. This month of We Bee With It, we made blocks for Sara. At first I thought it was one set of 4, but then realized that the set of 4 was actually one block! LOL. So here are my two blocks I'll be shipping away this week!

January Goal Completed - ALYOF

As my almost 2 yr old says all the time, "I DID IT". haha! It's my favorite when he does that.

My January goal  for A Lovely Year of Finishes was a small one, to finish my We Bee With It Bee Blocks.

Carol asked us to make improv blocks that contained white. I struggle with improv, but this is exactly why I love doing bees. It forces me to do things I wouldn't do for myself. And it's on such a small scale that it's manageable!

So these are my two finished blocks! I will be setting a more difficult challenge for myself next month. :) You can join in the "finishes" any month!

2014 - getting back in gear!

2013 was a year of big transitions for me personally. It took a lot of my focus away from the quilting in my life. Thankfully I seem to be settling in to my new roles and schedule and getting back to quilting like I used to.

As part of that, I am going to join the Lovely Year of Finishes for 2014 to keep me going and focused! Want to join me? Here's the link with information.

I also couldn't resist starting another bee. I love getting and sending quilty packages. And Bee quilts have so much possibility. So I'm joining in with We Bee With It on Flickr. My first goal for the year of finishes is to get my two blocks done for this month!

Carol has asked for 2 improv blocks. Improv has always been a challenge for me so this will be a good start for me. But she's also letting us basically use the colors we want. So for this I'm pulling out my scrap bin and going from there!

Here's to a more quilty 2014!!

Purple Diamonds!

It's finally finished! This started in February as my block for Make it Modern. They did such a great job that I decided to double the number of blocks to make it big and snuggly. This quilt is for my daughter who "loooves purple". So I got a photo of her with the quilt.

I was about 80% done with the blocks when she informs me she likes pink more than purple. So I added the pink diamond to add a little pop.

The obligatory back shot (with my assistant playing peekaboo).

This was a fun one to play with my quilting. It's still a little shaky, but it was good practice and i"m happy I did it. It would have been way easier on a longarm. I did swirls on the zigzag and some ovals on the diamonds.

Thank you to all the lovely ladies of Make it Modern and my friend Denise who also added a block for getting this quilt started. Sam and I love it!

 

 Quilt stats:

Quilt name: Purple Diamonds

Pattern: Half Rectangle Triangles

Fabrics: scrappy

Finished size: 60" x 66"

Finished: 11/5/13

Catch up on Bee Blocks

For the month of June I'm only in the Make it Modern Bee. The ladies picked two quick blocks so I got them quickly put together this weekend.




First is the Churn Dash for Jamie. She asked for yellow and black/dark gray.

Then Licet asked for this block from Don't Call me Betsy in yellow, black, grey, aqua and pops of coral. I hope my coral "pops" enough. It's pretty muted.

And I never blogged about last months blocks either.

Sarah asked for this version of the lonestar block. The block seems to come out at 12" finished rather than 12.5". A couple of us had that problem so Sarah let us add a border if needed.

And finally Audrey asked for the X and + block in black, gray and red.

 I think this may be my last month for bee blocks. But I do have a lot of other things to show you, I just need to get some photos taken....stay tuned!

update on April bee blocks

I never posted about all the goodness that I got in the mail in April!  I mentioned before that I was in the Hexy group of the 4x5 bee. The blocks that I sent in are posted here. And these are the beauties that I received.  If you go to the flickr link I've linked to everyone that made these lovelies.

And I already forget which month was mine in the Sew Modern Bee, I realized that I never posted all the blocks that I received from those great members (and one PMQG member who jumped in too!).

I'm one lucky swap member!

April Bee Blocks

I am sort of finished with my April Bee blocks. For do.GoodStitches Linda Beth requested scrappy half square triangles in light and dark values.

Then for Make it Modern, Jenniffier requested modified Bento Box blocks that she is going to cut up in aqua and orange.

and here's the 'sort of finished' part.  Jen requested these leaf blocks. She gave us two methods to make them and I chose paper pieced. I've done many paper pieced blocks so I don't know what my stumbling block has been with this one. But I've had the pull and resew so many pieces of these. And then I get to this point and they aren't long enough!? So I've left it up to Jen at this point if I should add white to the top (where it looks like they might be short) or if she wants me to send them with the inner and outer sashing. Either way I'm embarrassed that these kicked my butt! I think my brain is fried from going back to work. Yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

My bee blocks with basic directions

I really love my bee blocks this round for the 4x5 bee. I am in the hexy group and was totally in love with these blocks by Hambone and Jennicakes. So I set out to recreate them in my colors.  Here's my test block in my own colors:

Then I made blocks for all the ladies in my hive:

I thought about doing a tutorial for this, but I really don't have time right now for all the photo taking and editing. So here are some basic instructions if you would like to make this yourself.

The center is 3 diamonds. Start with a 3.5 inch strip and cut your diamonds like this tutorial.  Then piece them together. For how to make Y Seams, Jinny Beyer has the best video tutorial here. Seriously makes them so easy!

For the outside, I used a 1.5" strip. Just start at one end and stop at the other and trim it to the angle created by the original hexagon.

Once you have added 2 rows of strips around the outside you need to do your background. I used two 2" strips for the top and bottom and sewed those on first. Then I used 4" strips for the sides. Then take your 12.5" ruler and cut the final block out!