hipBees - May 2014

HipBees' Queen Bee Tanya is enlisting our help during her month to make blocks for a special gift quilt and she has chosen this fabulous paper pieced star from Fresh Lemon Quilts' Summer Sampler Series.

The fabrics Tanya sent us are absolutely beautiful together - I love this combination of bright turquoise and green against the dark grey background.  SO striking!

My blocks are the same only different if you know what I mean - a wee switch (deliberate, honest) in the turquoise fabric placement.

Looking forward to seeing the bright, bold and beautiful quilt come together!

Getting ready

Last night was all about prepping this little lot -

so that I can make 16 of those 6" tippecanoe blocks that you can see on the mat.  Tippecanoe - oh how I love that word!  I find myself randomly repeating it today like some kind of crazy woman, but it just makes me smile.

I'm just about still smiling at the thought of another 60(!) of those wee paper pieced quadrants but still they do come together nicely. Besides, it's been ages since I had some paper piecing fun and my Mystery Medallion Quilt is long overdue some attention having been abandoned rather discourteously so that I could fulfil January's commitments.  The tippecanoes are just part of border number 4.  They will be interspersed with an easy peasy spacing block.  I shall be back with the low down once I get these babies whipped together.  (Do you like how I made it sound like it will take me ten minutes rather than ten hours?)

Just so you know, the fabric has been cut approximately to the sizes required to help me minimise the waste on these pp blocks.  I don't normally work paper piecing this way but I did discover with these in the trial run that some simple cuts can help save wastage of my precious white-with-red prints for future borders.

Don't forget my notes on the Mystery Medallion so far can be found on the tab at the top of the page.

Sloping off now to finish a quilt binding (hopefully).

Le Challenge #1 - Geometrics

For the past month I've seen a few mentions of Lucy and Nat's monthly Le Challenge popping up on some friendly blogs and thought that sounded like a fun idea.  I just didn't quite get around to deciding to actually participate.  Until last night at 11 pm that is!!  I think I may have had a moment of sweet insanity, but here I am joining in having only taken the decisive leap 24 hrs ago.

So, what do you make to fulfil Le Challenge when you've given yourself precisely two and a half hours of a Monday night to create something in the geometric theme?  A little quilted coaster of course!

This is a little 4" paper pieced Lemoyne Star block, border added and lovely geometrically quilted chevrons to finish.  I could kick myself for changing my fabric choice on the star points after I started stitching.  I got so carried away by loving the pink berry print that I completely forgot it wouldn't contrast with the white background fabric like my original green choice would have. Doh!  Anyway, it's just for me in my sewing space and I like it.  Eh voila, le challenge is met!

Are you playing along?  Fancy having a go next month?  Nat and Lucy's theme for next time is wings!   Hmm, might need more than 24hrs for that one!

Snow plans

My car is under there somewhere!  The white stuff is falling fast and looks like it has no plans to let up tomorrow.  Could be a day or two before we can venture forth. Good job I have plenty of fabric to play with!

A snowy afternoon made me face my fears and finish off those long neglected baby taggy feelies for the craft sale (deferred for a while anyway).  

With those out of the way, I felt that maybe I could justifiably consider a wee new fun project ....

Lots of paper pieces in a whole range of sizes from that irregular hexagon to the teeny sliver beside it and everything in between.   We are not going to talk about how it might be possible to baste a sliver of paper - I didn't think it through, but I'm going to blunder on regardless.

I've been saving my precious remaining Ruby scraps for this wee project - happy dance!! I can't wait to get some of this stitched up so I can show you!

Hope you all have great plans for the weekend!

Christmas Gift Make Revealed

I wasn't able to reveal this little Christmas gift before the big day in case my mum should take a peek at the blog as she does from time to time.  But now that it has been safely delivered and opened I can tell all.

I stitched her up a little mug rug after my son volunteered me to make her one when we visited one afternoon.  I casually pretended not to take the suggestion under my notice, but then secretly began planing this one for her.

I made fabric choices from the remains of the fabrics used to make her this quillow last year - 

And, I chose a paper pieced angel design because she's a bit partial to cutesy angels.  Some of those pieces were really teeny but it was lots of fun to see her take shape in the fabric.

I did add a wee bit of Christmassy folksy angel fabric (mum's style) on the back but deliberately left the front non-Christmassy so she can use it for her cuppa for longer than just a few days now before she packs away the Christmas decorations!

Hope you like it mum!

Pulling fabric fun!

There's a new project on the go this week at class - Judith's going to take us through the steps to create her amazing Beach Huts cushion.  So I spent the afternoon hoking (it means having a good old rummage for those of you not familiar with this fab Northern Ireland word) in my scraps box for suitable bits and bobs to make the cushion.  So, here's my fabric "draft"

I love it so far, although it might need a little tweak here or there when wise and critical eyes have had a look too.  It's very bright but I'm going for the children's drawing look.  I love the sea fabric that looks like it has little jellyfish all over it.  Don't the huts look like they're wearing turbans with the fabric folded across them like this?

My plan is that this little project will be the start of my Christmas gifts and if it turns out as well as I hope it will be destined for a special two and a half year old girl.  There is no doubt a small issue of the unseasonal nature of a beach huts cushion gifted in December, but she's two and a half and I am well known for my unseasonal touches (I once made a full on Sunday lunch with all the trimmings in May and it turned out to be the hottest day of the year so we all ate it - apple crumble and all - at a plastic garden table in full glorious baking sunshine).  I may not be seasonal but at least I'm consistent.

Brit Quilt Swap - Progress Report 1

So here's how my Brit Quilt Swap mini-quilt is going -

There's been...

... a bit of this

folding

... lots of this

cutting

... oodles of this

stitching

... yes, a little bit of this (not too much though)

unpicking

... buckets of this

ironing

... gazillions of this

trimming

and eventually, three of these

daisies!

Still loads more to do, and I am now thankful that a) I started early and b) posting date isn't 'til end of June!

If you're peeking in partner, I really hope you like what you see so far!

Paper-Pieced Mug Rug

Learning to foundation piece on paper has been on my list of new things to try for a while now and last weekend I finally got around to having a go.

First effort paper-piecing after a few unpicking
and resizing fabric moments. Pity it is the wrong way round

In retrospect I could have chosen an easier pattern to start with but must admit to having been swayed towards this Union Flag block by the beautiful blocks made by the Ringo Pie Bee crew. They are just so talented, you have to check them out. If you fancy having a go yourself, there's a great paper-piecing template for a Union Flag at Four Twin Sisters.  Once I had my little practice block made up I liked it so much I didn't want to just stash it away in a drawer so I used Kerry's fab tutorial for single binding little things to make it up into a mug rug.

Adding binding a la Kerry's tutorial on the laptop screen!

Quilted and bound - not bad for a first effort, though
my hubby did point out that technically I didn't get the
placement of the wide stripes correct (he's a spotter).

Put to use as a mug rug.

I have some more practicing to do before I've quite got the hang of this patchwork technique, and think that perhaps I should go back a few steps and try some simpler patterns to become more familiar with the method. But I really enjoyed this piecing technique and my mind is racing with fun possibilities for future projects once a little more perfecting has taken place.