In which I share several bee blocks, part of an ugly Scrappy Trip Along quilt, my next #modernHSTquiltalong block, a South East West quilt top, a mermaid quilt top, and a finished patchwork quilt.
crafting friends through video since 2009
crafting friends through video since 2009
In which I share several bee blocks, part of an ugly Scrappy Trip Along quilt, my next #modernHSTquiltalong block, a South East West quilt top, a mermaid quilt top, and a finished patchwork quilt.
TTMT - Talk To Me Tuesday 
I can’t even fathom how cold your house was inside. WOW.
I love your HST blocks. They are really striking.
Now I want to try orange peel quilting. That looks fantastic!
I remember how much you loved that mermaid fabric! The top will look lovely quilted. 🙂
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My sister was home all that day while the furnace guys were in and when I got home, she was huddled on the couch with my bro-in-law under several blankets and she had snow pants on and he was wearing three hoodies with an extra toque… kind of funny. The heat was on at that point, but it just doesn’t warm up that fast, so we basically ate dinner and then went to bed and I slept with six blankets. It was just slightly warmer than the inside of the average fridge.
The orange peel quilting was really fun and so easy to do! I didn’t mark any of my lines, so they vary a lot over the quilt, and of course the earliest ones are the worst, but if you have something with an existing grid like this quilt you don’t need to mark anything and it goes really quick and easy. I really like how it looks and because I didn’t quilt it to death (like I tend to do when I’m doing all FMQ) it’s nice and soft and cushy.
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I am so glad the furnace guys were able to get everything fixed in a day. I can’t imagine what you would have done if it was longer!
Soft and cushy is very nice! That’s one the reasons I like a big meander so much, but I am started to lean more towards more quilting. I like the scrunch, too!
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I like the look of more quilting a lot and they’re not all uncushy (my one done with wool batting is heavily quilted but still very soft and drapes nicely, also one I did with recycled plastic batting… shockingly nice drape despite the heavy quilting), but I find some of the more basic cotton battings seem to be more stiff, though I imagine it just takes enough use and trips through the washing machine to soften them up too 😀
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I cannot even begin to imagine my home being that cold! I’m glad it is back to normal now.
You have been really busy. The HST quilt is stunning. Your quilting on that modern quilt is, as always, well done and very interesting. Excellent quilt show!!!
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It was ridiculously cold! It broke on the Monday and we had someone in that night to look at it, but they couldn’t get it going again, so I slept with nearly every quilt I own, which was nice and cozy really, but it was AWFUL getting up in the morning… imagine getting dressed inside of a fridge!
Anyway, thank you! I’m really looking forward to seeing how the HST quilt plays out, though it’s a very slow quiltalong, so who knows how I’ll feel about it by the time December rolls around. So far so good!
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Ugh We had that happen when we lived in Ohio. It was NYEs when the furnace died. We had a fireplace but it wasn’t enough heat to really help. It was so terribly cold.
The Modern HST quilt looks like it’s going to be pretty cool when it’s done. I like how they are playing with layouts to give different overlapping blocks.
I love the patchwork quilt. The orange peels look great and the color blocks being quilted more is a great added pop to them. Really nice work!
The mermaid quilt has so much negative space for quilting. I look forward to seeing what magic you work on it.
Happy Crafting!
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It’s the worst, isn’t it? We thought we had some space heaters somewhere in the basement, but couldn’t find any of them.. not that we’d have wanted to run them overnight anyway. Ah well, new furnace now, so it better not break for a good long while again 😀
I’m pretty intrigued with how the HST thing is coming together. I hope it keeps on playing around with the overlapping block idea… it’ll keep it interesting, I think.
I’ve got pretty dull plans for quilting the mermaid quilt, actually… I’ve tossed ideas around for years, but I think push comes to shove I’m going to go for something fairly simple. I have often thought about doing something kind of underwater-y, but I don’t want to dip into trying to create shapes like fish or whatever and I think the best I could probably manage is like… a seaweed look. Or maybe Angela Walters swirls that look a bit like eddying water, but then I don’t want to quilt the crap out of it because I think it’s going to be a charity quilt and while I don’t mind practicing on them, I also don’t want to spend days of my life quilting it if it’s not going to someone I know personally. I don’t know!
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I love the HST blocks. I can’t wait to see them all together. I also kind of giggled when you said that you are “slow” at getting things done- I wish I had as many finishes as you. I’m glad to hear that your furnace is fixed and hopefully you can enjoy much more warm quilting 🙂
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I’m slow at finishing projects in the sense that I have many, many projects that are getting close to a decade unfinished! I start sooooo many projects… I just fall down well before the finish line more often than not 😀
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Wow! You have been doing a lot of quilting! they all look great!
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Thanks! I spend far too much of my spare time sewing, but it’s also been SUPER cold for us lately (that same polar vortex people were talking about a month ago took a couple weeks to get to us, but then it really set itself in) so I don’t want to do anything much outside the house.. I’ve just been getting home and getting busy with a hot iron at my elbow haha!
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6 bee blocks makes you an overachiever.
Those HSTs are fabulous! Ombre is really popular right now. I agree with Jennifer R that it holds lots of great quilting opportunities, but also understand that if you are going to give it to charity you don’t want to spend a week on it.
That modern block one looks really interesting. Love the fabrics. I have been called a “modern quilter” three times in the last month.
That January UFO challenge is really cool. Good choice on the orange peels. I always like circles with squares for some reason. May I subconsciously think it proves that you can fit a square ped in a round hole or something.
Your February UFO is really fun. You might hang on to it for a little bit. If I gave a girl quilt to charity because I never know anyone having a girl, with a few months a little girl would show up and I would wish I had it. But you can always make another one.
You’ve been getting a lot accomplished! I finished my January UFO and the February one will be finished in a few days. Staying on track is unusual for me.
All your work is so beautiful.
Have a great week.
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With the bee blocks, I always feel like we should all kind of get about the same amount of finished product. We’re allowed to ask for blocks up to 18″ square, so if I do two of that size for one person and the next asks for 8″ blocks, I feel a bit like I should be making 8 blocks just to get to a comparable amount of fabric/work… I usually just make 4 blocks, 6 was kind of unusual! (Though I did 8 when they were just four-patch blocks in January.)
The modern designation is such a weird one… it just means too many different things to too many different people! I think of myself as modern in my general use of modern fabrics/colours, but I tend to be a traditional piecer and I love a lot of traditional design. Your black/white/grey/bit of blue blocks are going to lead to a lot of modern looking quilts, even when/if they’re made with traditional designs. I think you kind of go your own way, whatever direction that makes you dip into and I think that’s perfect for you.
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I’m sure the bee recipient is thrilled to get extra blocks. They are lovely, as are all your blocks.
The quilting on that finished quilt is great. I always think the one you called beads, right next to the spiderweb block, looks like peas in a pod. Your quilting always looks so amazing!
It’s going to be fun to see how that HST turns out when it’s all put together.
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It does look a bit like peas in a pod, doesn’t it? I think I thought of it as beads because the idea came from a class where there was a group of designs called beads on a string – basically any shape that’s connected via a “string” of quilting, though in that block of course I didn’t use the string part of the design! Someone on Instagram or maybe YouTube thought that same one looked like a shell, which I can sort of see as well! Whatever it is,I kind of love the look!
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