Brit Bee October

I got to work on my super delayed blocks for Susan this week; I had my block all chosen about a month ago, but I have taken forever to get started on it. Susan asked for a star block, for her month in the Bee and I chose the Desperate Housewife's Star from Quilt Jane.

Once I started my foundation paper piecing, I remembered how much I love it (although, not so much picking all the paper out of the backs!) and as Susan had asked for many different sizes of block, I decided to do some extras for her. For my second block I decided to do another Rocky Road to Kansas from Fresh Lemons, at 50% of the normal template size, along the same lines as the one I did for Laura in Round 1.

And I couldn't stop there, my final block is another reduced size block; a corruption of Fresh Lemons' Evening Star, initially I intended to just replace the coloured corners with more background fabric, but part way through piecing and cutting I realised that I didn't have enough Kona Coal to finish, after much unpicking; I replaced the central background fabrics for some more star fabrics and had JUST enough Kona to finish it off!

These blocks are now winging their way back to Susan, not quite in time.

J x

Playing Bee Catch Up

Wow this weekend really ran off with me, despite me taking an unofficial 3 day weekend (don't get excited- it wasn't for fun reasons) but I did manage to get on with my bee block... for may :( please don't be mad at me.

Each month I have been lucky enough to try something completely new to me but this month was 8 pointed stars and I have already tried an 8 pointed star here;

and for our super secret Project 51 here;

As I knew it was going to be particularly late, I wanted to put an extra special effort in so when I found the Lone Starburst block from Six White Horses Studio,

(image from Six White Horses)

I fell completely and utterly in love with it and I proceded to disregard all comments about how long it might take even an experienced paper piecer. Well it turns out they were right, this is one majorly time consuming block and as much as I love the pattern I do not think I could make a whole quilt out of it.  I mean, seriously time consuming, like an hour per 1/8th of a block! This was partly due to my inexperience and a comment from Kerry at the retreat that it was easier to be more precise by hand than by machine, honestly, looking back I probably should have graduated to machine piecing while doing this block but I enjoyed not having to lug my machine out all the time and just picking up a bit to finish off.

So without further ado, block one for Terri, aka Miss May

The colours probably wouldn't be my first choice but Terri has asked for the pink to be used as a background, I can't wait to see what she does with all of these stars; its going to be such a bright and colourful quilt!

J x