hexing around

I've been hesitant to join any bees this year, for obvious reasons, but I can never resist joining in with the 4x5  bee gang!  I can't even count how many rounds I've participated in (maybe this is the 6th?) and I can say I have never once been disappointed with the blocks I've received.

This round, I decided to jump in with the hexy hive, meaning just as it sounds, each block must incorporate hexagons in some form.  I had initially planned on machine piecing small hexagons cut with my Accuquilt GO!  but ultimately decided against it.  After some pinterest-ing for inspiration, I started doodling, and came up with this star in a hexagon shape that I was able to turn into a paper piecing pattern.  I finally bit the bullet and ordered EQ 7, so I'm hoping to be able to turn this into a computer generated paper piecing pattern, instead of my chicken scratch on the backs of old pieces of scrapbook paper.  Anyone that has tips for EQ 7, they would be much appreciated!

For Becky

I had to dig deep, as Becky requested navy blue, kelly green and aqua.  The aqua, I have covered.  There is so much aqua in my stash its almost a little ridiculous, the same goes for lime-y greens, but kelly green?  and navy?  Those are few and far between.  I dug out my pearl bracelets though, and found just the colors I was looking for.


for Cathy

I love these colors to pieces, I dug through and pulled out some Oval Elements and Pearl Bracelets for this blue, blue, and more blue block.


for Michelle

Michelle requested purple, black and grey.  The grey I've got covered, but purple and black are also colors I'm lacking in my stash.  I did come up with a black Comma barcode print, and a purple print from Bespoken by Pat Bravo for AGF.


for Caryn

So I don't like to play quilty favorites, but its going to take all my will power to not hoard this block and keep it all for myself.  Caryn asked for rainbow colors in spectrum order and white.  And really, what is better than purdy rainbow prints, and text prints??


for Sarah

Sarah asked for lime green, aqua and grey.  I played with all sorts of prints, but when I saw how well Color Me Retro and Simply Color played together, I was sold.  Paired with some fun paper clips, and I called these blocks finished.

Hopefully my bee mates are as happy as I am with these blocks, and be on the lookout for the paper piecing templates, if I can figure out how to do it!

oh baby!

So, you may have noticed that things have been a little quiet around these parts lately, but while I haven't been sewing, I've been doing alot of this:

       
                  

....and a little of this...



because we expecting a little one of these:



in October!  Our little guy (or lady!) should be making his or her appearance around October 12, just in time for the holidays!  We are beyond excited and looking forward to meeting out newest little family member.  Now that the cat's out of the bag (its about time!  I'm horrible at keeping secrets) you can believe for the next few months this blog will be inundated with all things baby, as my "baby" sewing list is about a mile long!  

easing back into things

My motivation for spending time in my sewing room seems to have evaporated as of late.  Its certainly not for a lack of projects to work on, because those are plenty, but for some reason, the sew-jo seems to have hit the road.  I will say, sometimes when I have so many things in various stages of completion, my brain just can't decide what to work on first, so naturally I just don't work on anything at all.

I've seen some elaborate forms of project tracking here and there, and always thought it was a little bit much, but it may be just what I need to keep things organized and prioritized.  I will admit I get some sort of mini high from checking things off a list!  I'm embarrassed to admit that I still have blocks for a do. Good Stitches quilt tucked away in my cabinet from last March.  Eeek.  Anyways, if anyone has any magic tracking/organization tips for keeping UFOs managed, I'd love to hear them!



Anyways, enough boo-hooing about what I haven't been working on, and onto a little something that does have me excited to huddle down in my sewing room and stitch away!  After seeing Natalie's hand quilted Single Girl quilt, inspiration struck, and I needed to stitch with curves.  Like that instant.  I have never made Denyse Schmidt's famous Single Girl quilt, I definitely missed the boat on that quilt along 2 years ago, and thought no time like the present.

I was thisclose to hitting the purchase button for the pattern, but the more I looked into it, the more I wasn't quite feeling it.  Reason A:  Templates.  Ugh.  When I put together my Double Wedding Ring Quilt a few years back, I specifically found a pattern that paper pieced the arcs.  I knew I definitely did not have the patience for cutting templates, tracing, and cutting fabric by hand with scissors.  Reason B:  I wanted more of a circle circle shape, not a rounded square-circle shape.  Reason C: I wanted more space between my circles, and less blank space in the circle center.

So...whats a gal to do??  Of course the only answer is to bust out her compass and random assorted scrapbooking paper (my personal fav for drafting paper piecing templates, as its nice and big at 12" square) and get to drafting a template that was just what I wanted!



Luckily this was not the headache I had envisioned in my head, and definitely did a happy dance when everything came together perfectly on the first go.  My arc templates are made, and are ready to be paper pieced, and I am just waiting on my order of Essex Linen in Natural for the background, and hopefully this will become a quilt top rather quickly! 

Exciting news

If you keep up with Lindsay at all, this isn't new news, but I wanted to share in the excitement as well!  You see, my friend Lindsay has a new book coming out this fall, and I get to be part of it!

My quilt even made the cover (second one from the top) {squeal!}

I'm honored and thrilled to be part of Lindsay's book writing journey, along with a whole host of super talented quilty ladies for the past year or so.  Lindsay has a great website set up with more info about the book contents and the quilt designers, AND you can already pre-order on Amazon!  You can read more about Modern Bee at Lindsay Sews, and she even has a celebratory giveaway going on that I believe closes at some point today!