In the Company of Angels!

It never ceases to amaze me how 3 women can spend an ENTIRE day talking about sewing, while driving, eating, drinking coffee, running in the rain, fabric shopping & gate-crashing my class!



Sarah & Di

That's multi-tasking at its best!  And the perfect way to spend a lovely day!  Thank you ladies!

And the sneaky peek I showed you yesterday?



A scented house gift for Di!

And for another angel, I've made these:



Terri is queenie in the Brit Bee for June, and she has a rampant mild addiction to star blocks! She has sent us all some solid and 2 sets of coloured prints to come up with some starry magic!

The red star is from the Fat Quarterly Shape Workshop book, and the yellow star is called Ribbon Star Block, by Lee of Freshly Pieced.

Unfortunately 2 of my outer points overshot in the yellow star, but I'm hoping T-Bone Angel will be gracious and forgiving!

In my other bee commitments this month, I rustled up an improv. log cabin for Hipbees Lynz, as per her requirements.



Lynz sent us some lovely solids and we had to sneak in a little bit of ourselves!  I went with some flowery Marmalade! Yum!

This really isn't the best photo of this block.  It is much straighter and nicer in real life! Honest!

You should check out the other Hipbee improv. blocks over in the Flickr group!  It's going to be a stunning quilt!

Have a wonderful Friday!

Jxo

Angel Blocks

I love the concept of 'Angel Blocks'.

If a fellow bee member is struggling to make their blocks a particular month, another member offers to be their 'angel' and make the blocks on their behalf.  Like a kind of Guaradian Angel!

Well I got the privilege to dust off my halo & be guardian angel to one of my Brit Bee buddies, making her October's blocks for Susan.



These are the fabrics that Susan sent out, and she wanted a range of star block sizes.  The largest block there is 9.5" and the smallest (Pinwheels, technically not a star block!) is 3".

These 2 blocks have been foundation pieced:



The blocks are now on their way to a rather soggy England!

And the halo and wings have been put away for another day!

Seeing Stars!

This month in the Modern Irish Bee, queenie Cindy has got us all starry eyed!

With the most scrummy fabrics to work with and sumptuous Kona Teal as the background, I think these blocks are really striking!  They were fiddly and time consuming to make, but I'm sure, like me, you can envisage a stunning quilt when Cindy has all her blocks in!

Someone in class this week told me that 'perfection' is simply a word in the dictionary!  I hope Cindy bears this in mind when she gets these blocks because I managed to lose a point here and there!!

And just look at this big fella who's been visiting our garden!

Isn't he cute! And huge!

He pitched up Monday evening.  We found out in the wee hours of the night when our dog Poppy started going nuts!  He disappeared and we thought that was it, but this evening he came back.  And Poppy went nuts again!!

There was nothing else for it but to bring him in, get some expert advice, and then take him on a short drive to our nearest park for despatch! 

I'm just sorry 2 of my girls were already in bed when this all happened - they would have loved seeing such a big hedgehog this close!

And the other morning hubby saw a fox in our front garden!  I wonder what other city wild life we'll get this week!

What a Star!

This month in the Brit Bee it's the turn of the hilariously funny, and true gem that is Terri.

Terri has sent the other 11 of us some fabric and a request for 8 pointed stars. 

I received some gorgeous yellows, aquas and grey for the backgrounds.  And here's how I used them:

'Orbit'

'Stargazing' from '99 Modern Blocks'

What is even more special about these blocks is that we get to hand them over in person at the Fat Quarterly Retreat!

I've also been doing a little alterations sewing on some trousers and tops I was given a long time ago.  It's soooo not my favourite kind of sewing, but needs must, and hopefully no-one will know that they've been altered when I've finished with them!

Btw, I forgot to tell you how I got on in last week's Quilting Gallery Wallhanging competition.  I'm delighted to say I didn't come last, which was my only aspiration!

Somewhere around the middle is always a cosy place to be!!  Thank you all for voting!

Have a fabulous weekend!

Brit Bee Blocks for Miss October

This week I finished my Brit Bee Blocks for Miss October (aka Laura Jane).  LJ had the inspired idea of theming her month with stars, any stars at all (because we are all stars in her eyes - bless!).

So after much researching my small collection of books, and online, I came up with these:

The 'Orbit' star

Spider's Web

I was nervous about jumping straight into LJs fabrics with new patterns, especially as I had to do some re-sizing (& Carol Voderman I am not!).  So I did practise blocks.

This one is foundation pieced Orbit star, and of course the practise block went like a dream, no hiccups whatsoever!

Until it came to the real thing!  

Foundation piecing is known for fabric waste, and I didn't want to waste any of LJs fabrics, especially as I had 2 x 12.5" blocks to get out of the gorgeous fabrics.  So some of the finished seams are smaller than 1/4 ", but they are all hidden behind the foundation fabric, and securely sewn.  So I'm hoping they'll pass.

The 2nd block is called Spider's Web, based on this tutorial.  Again I had some resizing issues, but my trial half block soon put me right.  

I love the scrappiness of this pattern, and while you need 4 of these blocks together to really appreciate the spider's web effect, I think it's a lovely star block in it's own right.  I can just see some perle cotton hand quilting going on inside the white star!

I got my siggy block* made too, all parcelled up and ready to twinkle their way to LJ.

(* A siggy block is a signature block, a small square with details of the person who made the block i.e. name, town, Bee, date.  Everyone in the Bee makes one each month for the person whose month it is.  They then have 11 siggys to piece into the back of their quilt as a record of all the contributors to the quilt. See here for an easy peasy tutorial.)

Have a fab Friday!

Judith xo