Modern Instabee 2014 (March)

I wrote about the Modern Bee I joined, last Monday.

Nancy chose the Triple Star block for March.

She wanted 2 complimentary colors and a white background.

She preferred pinks, yellows and greens.

She wanted us to use a little bumblebee from Heather Ross's Briar Rose line of fabric.

Nancy sent me a piece, enough so I could use some on one of the stars.

I chose the rest of the fabrics to compliment the little bee, in pinks and yellows.

Isn't she adorable with her little kerchief and apron?

This is the second layer of the star.  

The third layer...

I love the triple star block!  

It was great fun choosing the prints :)

Go to Instagram and look up #moderninstabee2014 and #moderninstabeehive11 for more photos.

Tee Shirt Quilt, WIP

I'm still working on this quilt for Sean :)

You can see my first post about this quilt here.

I had hoped to be further along that this, but I have been working on other projects.

I am a procrastinator when it comes to difficult things!

I appliquéd Sean's soccer number to some Kona fabric to replicate his soccer jersey.

Now I am squaring it to 12 l/2".

This is the top row of the quilt.

The two #32's are his "home" and "away" soccer game shirts.

I added a little bit of quilty color to the left of the Vikings :)

Those blocks are the leaves that I didn't like from the "Quilty fun Sew Along".  

I put them to good use :)  Ha ha!
I have a small box of "orphan blocks".

The purple and white arrow to the right of the white Vikings are some half square triangles that were left over from my grand daughter Kylie's wall hanging I made for her over a year ago.

These cougar and BYU embroideries used to be on a knit beanie.

I just cut around them and topstitched them to navy blue fabric.

Progress!  

We are moving this weekend, only a few blocks away :)

I am going to try and get this top sewn together today.

Wish me luck!

Quilty Fun Sew Along, Week 17

It's Week 17, not many more to go, in the Quilty Fun Sew Along.

This week, it's the mitten block.

There were a lot of different sizes to cut out of the white.

I really like this deer print, but it was a little tricky making sure all the deer were facing the same direction.

I love this swirly orange, it almost looks like frost :)

Pink, this is the color of my skin if I've been out in the cold too long, Lol!!!

My mitts are complete, but do you notice another mistake I made?

The deer are upside down!

I have a lot to do these days, and I'm trying to sew quickly!

Did I tell you that we're moving to another house in a few days, a few blocks away, and that my son is coming home from his 2 year church mission in 5 weeks and 1 day?

My grand daughter's 4th birthday is coming up and I want to make her some doll clothes for the doll we gave her at Christmas.

So many sewing projects, so little time.....

All is not lost, I think the mittens look better this way.

Thanks for letting me share all my sewing projects with you, it's really nice to have an audience :)

Modern Instabee 2014 (February)

A great advantage to following quilters on Instagram, is that you are made aware of online sewing bees :)

I joined this one called Modern Instabee.

I belong to Hive 11. 

You have to buy this book to participate, but I love the book so that wasn't a problem.

You can watch a short video about the book here.

If you want to see the blocks all the hives are creating for the bee, go to Instagram and look for #moderninstabee2014 and #moderninstabeehive11.
If you are interested in joining, follow Lindsaysews (Lindsay Conner), she is the author of the book and the queen bee :)

Each of the quilters involved in the bee chooses a month,

mine's October :)

You then choose the block you would like the other quilters in your hive to make for you.

You tell them what colors, or send them fabric to make it if you are very particular.

February's block was the Stacked Windmills block, for Sarah.

You can display a photo of the fabrics you are going to use in the block and have them approved first, if you want to.

It's not necessary though.

Look at this different method of making half square triangles.

Sew around two pieces of fabric, using a l/4" S/A.

Then you cut 2 lines diagonally with your rotary cutter.

Then you simply press the half square triangles open.

It's amazing all the techniques there are in quilting!

We're not quite finished.....each square needs to be squared up.

Look at all the trimmings!

Make sure all of your half square triangles are all in the right order.

Sarah requested bright spring colors such as orange, blue, green, yellow, red and a hint of pink.

We could only choose 4 prints for this block, with a white background.

Here is the completed block, I think it looks really pretty!
The stacked windmill blocks look really different when they are placed side by side in a quilt.
I'm thinking about choosing this block for my month :)

Spell it with Fabric

A couple of weeks ago, Moda hosted a blog hop called "Spell it with Fabric".

I pinned every single alphabet and number and punctuation mark, and you can find it on my Pinterest board here.

It was so much fun to choose the fabrics!!!

I chose red for "A" because it reminds me of apple.

"B" is for blue.

"C" is for my cute little grand daughter Charlotte, and me, Cynthia.

This fabric is Mary Engelbreit, which makes me think of cherries.

I just like the blue and gold together ;)

I love this olive green with the paisley orange.

"F" is for flower.

I thought there would me more of a contrast if I used a solid color letter and flowered background.

I pinned some completed quilts to my board also.

This is as far as I got, I spent 2 evenings sewing these letters, it was my "fun" project.

Now I have things I have to get done, like my son's tee shirt quilt!

Quilty Fun Sew Along, Week 16

This week, I sewed 6 spool blocks.  

These are the quilty colors I chose.

Here are my spools, laying across my red chair.

I used the same Kona charcoal for the spools, that I used for the butterfly bodies.

After I sewed my spools, I cut out sashing and sewed the right section of my quilt together.

The 2 posie blocks will be sewn on the bottom, below the four honeycombs.

I need to start thinking what colors I want my borders to be :)

Honeycomb Table Topper with tutorial link

I bought Lori Holt's Hexie Half Ruler.

 The rulers made this honeycomb table topper much easier!

I zigzagged the inner hexes to the larger ones with invisible thread.  

I don't know if that would work very well on a quilt that will have lots of washings, but I think it's okay for this table topper.

I bound it with a solid color, scrappy binding.

I used my walking foot to machine quilt, and I was really happy with the results.  

It would have taken me forever to do this on my old machine.

I just love my Bernina 750 QE, I feel very spoiled :)

I used Kona charcoal for the side borders.

I can reverse the table topper and use it for Christmas or Valentine's  or even Canada Day, with the bright red backing :)

If you would like a tutorial about how to make a quilt using this method, Lori has one here.

I would love to make a full size quilt like hers one of these days.