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!

Decision making - would love your opinion...

So as we quilters are known to do, I'm dropping all my projects and working on what I'm most excited about. I want to make this Ornate Mini Quilt from the Sometimes Crafter for my office.

I'm actually struggling with colors. I usually have a starting point, but our office is being re-done shortly into neutral colors. So I can do whatever I want. I hit up Design Seeds which is my favorite place for color inspiration and pulled a few options. I think one is emerging as a favorite, but I'd love to know which you like best. Most of them I didn't pull all colors because you don't really need a lot of colors for this quilt.

Option 1 inspiration palette:

My fabric pull:

Option 2 inspiration:

My fabric pull:

 Option 3:

My Fabric pull:

 Option 4:

Fabric pull:

hmm... looking at these, I'm not sure I like any of my fabric pulls. lol. I think I'm definitely over thinking this one. Anyway, here's the poll. Let's see what you think! If you have another color idea, please post in the comments.

A quilt top finish

I finished this top before I went back to work but I was so miffed at it that I put it away. The sun was actually out so I took a few photos. Let me give you the story on this one.

The pattern is Apron Strings by Sweetwater. My first irritation is that it is listed on the back at "jelly roll friendly". When you read the directions, those strips at 1.5" wide, not 2.5". I don't know about you, but I have zero desire to cut down my jelly roll! So I had an old honey bun of Hello Betty in my drawer and decided to use that instead.

Then I later found that I had an old version of the pattern and had some issues cutting the strips. Instead of cutting the patterns and the white, it had me cutting all the patterns. So I wound up piecing those together for the backing (no photo yet).

Then, I had issues because the way the blocks are constructed doesn't leave any room for squaring up. So there are some minor inconsistencies throughout the quilt.

Finally, since I used an old fabric line, I had a hard time finding a border fabric. All I could find was this small print orange. I pretty much hate it as the border. It's too busy and hurts my eyes. I may rip it off and replace it with a solid.

But for now it's getting put away until I can look at it without screaming!

PMQG March challenge

I realized in all the chaos of the last two weeks I never posted about these finishes.  Our Philly Modern Quilt Guild Challenge for March was to make a cover for these Ikea seat cushions. They had been popping up in our Guild Sewing days and everyone wanted one so we decided to make a challenge of it. The bottoms have this great grippy stuff on them so they don't slide off. So one of our members, Bobbi, gave us a quick tutorial for creating a drawstring closure.

So all we had to do was figure out our tops. As soon as this challenge was announced I knew what I wanted to do. I've had the Joseph's Coat block on my to-do list forever (here's the tutorial I used) and I knew it was perfect for this. But I wanted to attempt something a little special with it. I got out my ombre fabrics from Vanessa Christensen's first line and started cutting. Sadly the ombre effect wasn't enough to work in this small of a block.

And I have pin marks because I used interfacing on the petals. Anyone know how to get rid of those!? I didn't really plan on washing this, but I guess I can.

So I wasn't thrilled with that one so I tried again and I really like the second one.

It's very sewing appropriate isn't it!? 

I wasn't able to make it to the meeting since it was my second day of work, but the rest of the guild covers should be posted on our site soon!

A tale of 2 quilts

These are my his and hers I-Spy quilts for my kiddos.  Last year I participated in 2 I-Spy charm swaps. One was a regular swap where you got a yard, cut it into charms and got back a bunch of different charms. The second was a boy/girl swap where you sent in one set of boy charms and one set of girl charms. Once I had all these charms, I knew I had to make a quilt for each of the kids.

I made Samantha's first since she can actually play I-Spy. I used Kona natural for the sashing. I didn't want white since they are going to be used by the kids and there is so many different colors in the blocks.

I quilted hers with a diagonal stitching which was simple and yet fairly dense. Plus I wanted something all in one direction since I was using minky on the back. I didn't want any bubbles or folds to happen.

Evan's quilt wound up one row bigger than Samantha's (thankfully she hasn't noticed it yet).  Somehow I miss counted and had 4 stray blocks at the end. So I routed through my stash and found a few more blocks to make an extra row.

I did his quilting with wavy and straight lines going across. And you can see at the very bottom of that photo, I tried to use what I call the "baseball" stitch. It wound up being to heavy for me. It kind of obscures the pictures. Plus it took a looong time! So I just did a matching baseball stitch on the other end so they bookmark the quilt.

Here is the awesome minky I used on both of them and my labels. I think it was Robert Kaufman. It is so soft and wonderful. Needless to say, they have become the favorite snuggle quilts in the evenings!

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Boy, you go to work for a week and everything changes! I'm trying out bloglovin' and claiming my blog!

Got some finishes that I just need to get photos for you.  Hope you had a good week. Things were a bit rough around here as everyone got adjusted. But thankfully, my job is great and my coworkers are fantastic. It's the best I could hope for as my kids get used to me not being around 24/7.

Big Changes for me

It's been a bit quiet around here. As I mentioned before I was job hunting and I've been lucky enough to find a new position! It's a fantastic job and nice and close by. But it's going to be hard to leave my kids. So I imagine things might be a little quiet for a while around here as I adjust to my new schedule. Though I will say, I have quite a few projects in the works and some are close to being finished.

Right now, I just have my bee blocks from March to show you.  For Do.Good Stitches, we were asked to make these star blocks in summery colors.

For Make It Modern, it is my month so I am receiving the purple and gray diamond blocks! Once I have them up on the wall, I'll get a photo.

It is also Karen's month and she asked for scrappy blue, yellow and gray X and + blocks.

April will be very interesting no doubt!