And they're off ....

My first bee block packets are making their merry way to various locations on the globe and ten people I've never met will be making me blocks for a quilt.

I found some Michael Miller fabric at my LQS

I find this whole bee concept fascinating now that I'm part of it.  Twelve women (well, eleven in our case ..  one dropped out) from all over the world (one is in Germany) have joined together to make twelve quilts.  We've never met, we don't know much about each others' lives, but yet we will each have a quilt that was crafted by the combined effort and creativity of us as a group. 

I can't wait until these start coming back

Really remarkable when you think about it. 

Sugar and Spice Baby Quilt

Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of .... 

38" x 50"

This was a fun and easy quilt to sew together for a new baby girl.  I was inspired by this baby bento box tutorial by Wendy Lou.  I started with a 8.5 " square and just sewed on border after border after border until I had a giant square.  I quartered it and rearranged and then sewed into a block.  Pretty easy and fun!

Check out my son's tan lines

Hand quilted with perle cotton #8 in white.  Hand quilted during a heat wave in July I may add ....   

 

 Since it's summer and it's fair season I'm entering this quilt in the Gen X Quilter's Summer Fair Quilt Show.  Click over there to check out all the cool quilts at the fair without having to leave your porch and your ice tea.  Now if only someone would bring me a funnel cake .....

Work In Progress Wednesday

Does this look hot?  Well, it is! 

Remember when I said if I continue to hand quilt I wouldn't have anything new to report for long stretches other than "still hand quilting?"  Well, here I go .... STILL.HAND.QUILTING. my bento box baby quilt.  May I add that my previous post of how much I loved quilting on the couch in the evenings with my dog nestled sweetly beside me does not apply during a humid heat wave in July.  A damp quilt touching my sweaty skin and a hot, panting, annoying entity sprawled near me is not a pleasant experience.  I wouldn't be working on this at all if the baby-in-question wasn't due at the end of this month. 

My other work in progress is a kaleidoscope quilt that I'm making with Betsy.  I've got all the patterned triangles cut and attached and now need to cut the background triangles and get sewing. I've given up on any hope on getting this done with the rest of the group but will be plugging along at my own pace.  Now that I've taken the pressure off myself to stick to a timetable I'm actually enjoying it more.  I don't know why I let those self-imposed deadlines stress me out. 


An exciting mail delivery last week has got me dreaming of a new project.  I won a complete set of fat eighths of Maison de Garance by French General from Lesly of Pickledish.  Seriously!  That was ME!  Due to my less-than-stellar housekeeping they have been sitting right on the edge of the dining room table since I got them and I've been stroking and rearranging the fabric each time I pass.  What should I make?  The possibilities are simply endless before I start cutting.  I think these are way too pretty to mess up with nasty old cutting so I'll leave them for a while.  

These are so much more beautiful in real life

Ahhhhh .... when the chaos of my house overwhelms me I can just gaze upon these beautiful, perfectly neat stacks.

These aren't many works but I don't find summer's hot months conducive to quilting.   (... or cleaning, ... or cooking, ... or shopping)  I guess until fall you'll find me on my porch reading with a cold drink nearby

  

[insert mental picture of fabulously interesting book and a cold sweaty beer bottle 
on a sunny porch railing]