Traveling Quilt Bee: The Beginning

When I saw that sign ups were open for the Traveling Quilt Bee on Instagram, I was very intrigued and signed up. I have seen a number of other quilters participate in these sorts of bees, but this one caught my eye because the quilt isn't necessarily going to be a medallion quilt -- the next quilters in the chain won't add to all four sides, just one or two!

Here's my color inspiration mosaic:

The floral print in the upper lefthand corner is a large scale fabric that I bought eight yards of about a year ago at one of the local quilt shops with the intent to use it as a backing. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to use it so I built my color palette around it, minus the olive green.

Here's my design mosaic:

The Moda Building blocks quilt in the bottom left is probably closest to my "vision" and will likely be the easiest to achieve in this style of bee. The main focus is classic blocks in various sizes without any sashing or borders.

This weekend I made my starting block! I used Judy Martin's Star Cluster block, but adjusted it to make a 20" finished block.

I used all small scale prints and tonals as my focus fabrics and Kona white as my background. We also are including a journal with our quilts as it travels along so that our bee mates can add notes about what they did! I wrote in a lot of details about what I am looking for, as well as included the size of my block and where it came from, then recommended some block sizes for going forward.

This should be a fun adventure for the rest of the year! I am very excited to get my first quilt to work on at the end of this month!

Sharing at Fabric Tuesday, Let's Bee Social, and Sew Cute Tuesday!

Sea Glass {RSC 2016}

This week I finished up my last five Farmer's Wife blocks for this month. I definitely didn't use quite as much lime green as I originally planned, but I am very happy with these blocks!

#62 - Old Windmill, #63 - Ozark Maple Leaf

#64 - Peace and Plenty, #65 - Peaceful Hours, #66 - Periwinkle

My favorite one out of this set is Peaceful Hours -- that one has almost 40 pieces! The rest were much simpler. :)

Here are all of my aqua blocks for this month:

These will blend very well between my blue blocks and my green blocks! Since I'm done with all of my Farmer's Wife blocks for this month, I'll be working on my two blue birthstone blocks next week. After that -- who knows! I need to get started on my next Moda Bake Shop quilt for July too!

Sharing at Scrap Happy Saturday and Oh Scrap!

June Stash Bee blocks

This month for the Stash Bee, Francis has requested King's Cross Blocks inspired by this pattern. She asked for the main fabric to be floral and for the colors to be bright and cheery!

For the first block I found a yellow vine print with birds on it! I used a pink jelly roll strip from my stash as the sashing and a purple centerstone.

For the second block I used a psychedelic floral print in oranges and yellows, a green and blue floral print for the sashing, and the same purple centerstone.

These will be sent off to Germany this weekend!

These blocks were so quick and fun I might have to make some myself! This would be a great way to bust a layer cake! :)

Summer on the Coast -- Month #3 -- Unit C

It's the first Tuesday of the month so that means it is time for another installment of the Summer on the Coast QAL!

This is our last month for making blocks -- next month will be the top reveal with lots of tips on how to put your quilt together! In the mean time, let's get to making our twisting triangle blocks.

Update 1/2/19: Right now our free patterns are not available because of the changes to Craftsy. We are in the process of moving our free patterns to Payhip and will send an update once that is complete.

Baby: 24 units (1/4 yard for small triangles, 1/2 yard of large triangle color A, 1/2 yard of large triangle color B, 1/2 yard background for strips)
Throw: 36 units (1/4 yard for small triangles, 2/3 yard of large triangle color A, 2/3 yard of large triangle color B, 3/4 yard background for strips)
Twin: 80 units (2/3 yard for small triangles, 1 1/8 yards of large triangle color A, 1 1/18 yards of large triangle color B, 1 1/2 yards background for strips)

If you want to pre-cut your pieces to help reduce some trim-off waste, my recommendations for cutting is as follows:

Small triangles: Cut 4 inch squares diagonally in half once. You will need to cut 12 squares (24 triangles) for the baby size, 18 squares (36 triangles) for the throw size, and 40 squares (80 triangles) for the twin size.

Large triangles: Cut 7.75 inch squares diagonally in have twice, using two different color fabrics. You will need to cut 6 squares in each color (48 triangles total, 24 in each color) for the baby size, 9 squares in each color (72 triangles total, 36 in each color) for the throw size, and 20 triangles in each color (160 triangles total, 80 in each color) for the twin size.

NOTE: as requested by one of our participants, you CAN use charm squares in this unit. Instead of cutting 7.75 inch squares diagonally twice for your large squares, cut your charm squares in half diagonally once. This will be slightly tight, but if you are careful about your placement you should be able to use the charm squares. You can also use charm squares for your small triangles.

For each block, you will need one large triangle in each color, one small triangle, and one section of strip -- you should be able to get 4 blocks pieced with one of your WOF strips.

Start by sewing your two large triangles together. It honestly doesn't matter which color goes where, but you should be consistent through all of your blocks.

Now add your strip to your triangles. You will likely want to trim off your excess WOF strip so that it isn't in the way! I trimmed mine at an angle so that it wasted less fabric.

Finally add your small triangle and trim your block to 6.5 inches.

That was simple, right? If you haven't joined in yet, there is still time! Don't forget to share pictures in the Flickr group!

Ocean {RSC 2016}

It's the beginning of the month which means there is a new color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge! Our assigned color this month is aqua with lime green accents. In January, the color was true blue and so I separated my blue scraps into true blue and aqua/teal piles so I was already ready to go for this month.

My piles of light, medium, and dark aquas and teals aren't too frightening.

I don't have a ton of lights, so I will probably have a few blocks with darker backgrounds. My mediums pile is double the size of the dark pile and triple the size of the light pile, so that's where I'll be focusing my attentions.

I was able to get the first six blocks together relatively quickly over the last two days, so potentially I'll be able to squeeze in some of my blue birthstone blocks this month too!

Here are the six that I have done so far:

#56 - Maple Leaf, #57 - Morning, # 58 - Mother's Dream

#59 - Night and Day, #60 - Noon and Light, #61 - Northern Lights

As you can see, other than the Night and Day block, these were pretty simple to put together. I think my favorite out of this bunch is the Noon and Light block -- what about you? Can you spot the little koalas on the maple leaf block?

Have a wonderful weekend! Sharing at Scrap Happy Saturday! 

Don't forget that Tuesday is the next installment of the Summer on the Coast QAL! And pop on over to Flickr if you might be interested in doing a 2.5 inch strip swap at some point this summer!