Late Bees

I have been a very bad girl. Last year didn’t end too well; I felt rather distraught and stressed and therefore not in the mood to sew the bee blocks for the Euro Siblings Together Bee. Yesterday I finally sat down at my machine and started the Anna Maria Horner feathers that Allie had requested. I didn’t manage to finish them but the second I dropped Little Miss Bossy-Boots at Kindergarten today I sat down again and finished them. They came together alright, although I’m not sure I will ever make a feathers quilt.

FeathersThe colours requested were ‘cockerel’ colours so I had to dig very deep in my stash where pinks and blues are the most prominent colours. My biggest problem, however, is the lack of a long ruler. My longest ruler is 14″ long which just isn’t long enough for these 18.5″ blocks we produce in this bee. I have therefore decided to send them untrimmed and let Allie sew them together.

The feathers were November’s block *hangs head in shame* so the second they were finished I turned my hand to December’s block, a nice simple star in pink and blue for Helen.

StarThis one was so quick and easy. It would have been even quicker if I hadn’t had to get the seam ripper out when I sewed together two squares the wrong way. Little Miss Bossy-Boots loves this one and has asked me to make her a quilt like that for her bed.

This month we’re doing improv trees for Agnieszka. I’m really looking forward to getting them done next week as I hate being late for bees. Before I sew the trees, though, I have to put together a desk and finish my Doll Quilt Swap 14 quilt.

 

Siblings Together

Quilts for Siblings Together

Siblings Together is a wonderful charity which brings together siblings which have been separated by the care system. Quilts for Siblings Together was founded by Lynne from Lily’s Quilts and you can read all about how it started here and here. Last year I wasn’t at all confident in my quilting and didn’t join in. This year, however, I decided to get stuck in; after all, I’ve made one quilt since.

Siblings Together Quilt

I gathered some fat quarters which were in the Fat Quarterly Retreat swag bag, some Kona white and pepper and the London fabric I bought for the retreat and started cutting them into 4″ squares. I then sat down with TouchDraw, a great app for the iPad, and designed a few quilts. In the end I decided to go for one I called ‘Confetti’ where the different fabrics looked as if they were falling from a white background onto a black one. I sewed one row together when, shock horror, TouchDraw crashed and I lost all of my designs (that’s what I thought anyway, Master has since recovered them). So I winged it and just randomly sewed together squares trying to make sure they were sort of evenly spread. Now, anyone who knows me knows it’s very hard for me to let go like that. I really like the result, though, and I’m sure I could do it again.

In the end, the quilt top ended up smaller than I had hoped but I ran out of fabric. At the moment it’s 50″ x 56″ which is a nice lap size but I wonder if it’s a bit small.