.: catching up on bee blocks :.

Term 2 was some kind of crazy frenzy for us, so I fell a little behind on my bee blocks - this is really rare, as I hate being late for anything, ever.  So I spent Monday - the first official day of the school holidays - sewing up my bee blocks. 

For our Care Circle of doGoodStitches, Leanne asked for polka-dot quarter-circles (for May! ...), and emailed us all a template she had created in EQ7.  The polka-dot background could be any polka-dots, any colours.  And the quarter-circles had to be any-colour solids. 

Leanne also had July for our Care Circle (June was a rest-month, thankfully, otherwise I'd be sharing June blocks with you now too!).  These scrappy plus blocks are from this tutorial on the Bernina website, by Faith Jones of Fresh Lemons Quilts.  How cute will both these quilts be?!

And last up are Ocean Waves blocks for Rachel, for our Sew Sisters bee (which is made up of some of the girls from our Care Circle).  Rachel is currently working her way through making all the quilts in Denyse Schmidt's wonderful Modern Quilts Traditional Inspiration - there's an awesome #quiltthebook hashtag going on on Instagram.  Rachel has already made + received quite a few blocks, and the quilt is looking fabulous already. 

OK so that's me caught up until our next Care Circle month in August, and whoever is up next in our Sew Sisters bee for August/September.  Next on my list is finishing my Riley Blake challenge quilt for the MQG's latest fabric challenge.  xoxo cat

.: Sew Sisters Bee - blocks for Gina :.

I'm in a new bee - Sew Sisters - it's made up of seven of the girls from our Care Circle of doGoodStitches.  Time constraints and the craziness of life have stopped all of the Care girls from being able to join in.  I was hoping we could be called ANZASS - Australia New Zealand Awesome Sew Sisters ... but everyone's politely ignoring that clearly a-mazing suggestion ... :-)

Merran drew Gina's name out of the hat to be our very first Queen Bee, and Gina asked for Rocky Mountain Puzzle blocks, using the Quilters' Cache pattern.  Gina already has several gorgeous Puzzle blocks from an earlier bee, and also gave us a link to the gorgeous blocks on Amy's blog. 

Gina asked for a low volume background, the same subdued-tone (rather than super-bright-tone) fabric/colour for the rectangle, and also for the triangles.  I'd noticed that Gina likes Denyse Schmidt fabrics, so went through my Denyse stash to try and find not-too-bright prints to use (for the triangles in each block).   I took it as a given that we could fussy-cut the centre square! 

There are Tula Pink bees buzzing around the Cotton + Steel tiger, and Cotton + Steel US state names floating round the Kerchief girl (who I have been thinking of as 'Georgia' ... mmhmmm can you work out why? ...).

There’s a little trick to sewing the rectangle around the centre square - we’re talking a partial seam - but as Merran pointed out on Instagram yesterday, any lingering anxiety about partial seams has been squashed by our conquering the rainbow star last month in our Care Circle!  #takethat

I do love these blocks - Gina's quilt will be gorgeous - and I love her idea of combining blocks from different bees to make one quilt.  

And now it's on to a few tiny Ohio Stars for my Wee Bee blocks - hopefully I'll be sharing those with you before the end of the week.  xoxo cat

.: September doGoodStitches blocks for Leanne :.

I'm nerdishly excited about being able to share my Care Circle doGoodStitches blocks for September already - I ran so late for July and August, I feel like I'm getting back on top of my sewing list at last.   It's ok with me if you're not feeling the excitement, honestly, I totally understand. 

It's Leanne's month, and she chose chose two 12 1/2" star blocks, using white for the background and scrappy colours for the centre squares and HST's.  The centre squares are 3 1/2 ", so they were the perfect reason to cut into my Tula Pink Moonshine deers, bought from TQES.

And I figured some Tula bees, Lizzy House cats, a Robert Kaufman fox and a few Cotton+Steel tigers could join the party in the middle too. 

So that's September done and dusted, and it's only the 8th!  AND I've already sewn bee blocks for Gina, which I'll share tomorrow, and I'm hoping to make a start on (already late) Wee Bee blocks for Elizabeth tonight.  Somebody.  Stop.  Me. 

Hope your week has started well too.  xoxo cat

.: bee blocks :.

Helloooo from hot, humid, hiding-in-air-con Brisbane!

Popping in to share a couple of bee blocks with you.  I'm pretty sure that my blogging-slackness over the past few months has meant that there are a few blocks I haven't yet shared ... but these blocks hit the post on Friday and just this morning, so I know I definitely haven't shared them yet!

First up is Jodi's block for our Care Circle of doGoodStitches.  The pattern is Anna Maria Horner's Spinning Stars.  Jodi requested that the middle of the block be scrappy green/teal/aqua, the ring be low volume whites, and the outside bit be alternating yellow and orange.  The block is huge - about 18 1/2 inches.  I love it, and can't wait to see the finished quilt - all the yellows and oranges will come together to make a great secondary pattern.  

And in a fabulous segue into Danielle's blocks for the AusModBee - here are some of them together with Jodi's star! 

Danielle created her own butterfly paper-pieced pattern, inspired by both Kumiko Fujita, and Rita from Red Pepper Quilts.  Each little butterfly is 5 inches square.  

Love them, they are so sweet and will look so fun flying all over the black background on the quilt.

Now that I've posted both sets of blocks, I'm officially caught up on all my bee-sewing!  I really want to now make a few more blocks for the girls' quilts, before I start on anything else.   ' til next time - hope you are avoiding any extreme heat or cold that's going on outside your house!  xoxo cat