June do. Good Stitches blocks

Once again it's my turn to lead the Emerge circle in our quilt for this month. As someone who could barely stand to plug in my iron this past week due to a ridiculous heat wave, I'm keeping it easy this month. We'll be making a scrappy black and white plus quilt.

Instead of the usual 2 blocks, I'm asking each member of the circle to make one larger block and one strip, all from 5" squares.

Cut:
(15) 5" square white/cream low volume or solid fabrics
(5) 5" square black/dark grey fabrics
* Please make sure you are using modern quilt-shop quality fabrics.

Arrange and sew per this picture - you will make one 4x4 block (measuring 18.5 x 18.5" when sewn) and 1 1x4 strip (measuring 5 x 18.5"):

Please press your seams open to avoid bulk and ship to me when you're ready.

In the meantime, I'll finish up my May blocks and get quilting the other two Emerge dgs quilts I have in the works.

All of the arrows

February is my month to pick out a design for the Believe circle of do, Good Stitches and I just can't get arrows out of my head. They're everywhere right now! I have a Pinterest board where I've been saving some of my faves, and there may be a feather or two that snuck in there too. I mean, they totally go together, right?

Schnitzel & Boo's Mini Quilt

Intricately paper pieced or totally improved, they are all great. There are tons of patterns out there so I will leave this month pretty open as far as what you make. Send me some arrows, any arrows you'd like to make. I don't mind putting a small feather or two in there but I'd like to keep it mostly arrows. As for size, I will leave that open too but please try to send the equivalent of two 12 1/2" blocks.

Our own Sarah {no hats in the house} made up this adorable feather block

For colors, think fresh and springy like the palette below. Prints and solids are both fine but I'd like a background of solid light neutrals - white, cream, light grey, khaki. If you need a little extra definition in the form of a deep brown or black in your arrows, that's okay, go for it. Just have fun with these!

The Perfect Palette: Bouquet

One more fun example:

arrows by Jenny Makes Stuff

Ocean Current

I belong to a charity bee on Flickr called do. Good Stitches. It's a wonderful (and huge) group of quilters that makes quilts for various charities. We are split up into circles of 10 to make things more manageable. My circle, Believe, makes quilts for foster kids that we send to My Very Own Blanket in Ohio. I love this cause!

Each group has stitchers who sew 2 blocks per month, and quilters who put those blocks together and do the actual quilting. I was a quilter for awhile and this is one of the quilts I made. The quilter also gets to pick out the design and color palette so of course I went with blues! My stash is overflowing with blues.

I wasn't sure exactly how I was going to put the blocks together but I knew the half square triangles would give me a lot to work with. I put them on the design wall and just kept moving them around until I had a few layouts I liked. In the end, I really love how this one came together.

The quilting was a lot of fun on this one! I wanted it to be dense to withstand a lot of washing and I wanted to have some fun with free motion quilting. I decided on thin figure 8s for the blue lines and a boxy stipple in the white lines. I was able to get the whole thing done on my Juki in just a few hours! Oh how I love my Juki!

As I was finishing this one up, a terrible landslide tragedy struck very close to home. The Oso landslide killed 43 people and buried 49 homes in Oso, Washington all in a matter of seconds. It took weeks to find all of the victims as the mud and debris were over 100 ft deep in some places. My dad's house is just 10 miles away from this on that same road so it was pretty scary for me. I talked to my Believe circle and they agreed to let me send this quilt to the Oso victims and first responders instead. I hope it's bringing comfort and joy to whomever has it now!

Allison

PS - since it's the beginning of the month, it's goal time! I'm going to finish my Oakshott Autumn quilt this month. Promise!

So many swaps and bees

When I first found the modern quilting world about a year and a half ago, I was so excited to jump right in. I would see my favorite bloggers - like Alyssa - making gorgeous things and I wanted to be the recipient of those gorgeous things! This opened my eyes to a whole world of happy mail day possibilities.

I joined a few sampler bees on flickr and got right to work, making blocks for my bee-mates and looking forward to the packages I would get in return.

the blocks I made my group for my very first bee

I've had a lot of fun joining various bees and swaps since then. It's always so much fun for swaps in particular to learn about the recipient and make something just for them. As a matter of fact, I have finished up 3 swaps in the past month or two that were a lot of fun.

The Sew Sew Modern swap was the most recent. I was a little nervous when I got my assignment because my partner is kind of a big deal - Anne Sullivan of Play Crafts. She was great though, giving lots of feedback and advice all along the way. She didn't know I had her so I was pretty excited when she said she really loved what I had made so far. I ended up making her a patchwork Super Tote and improving a little flying geese pouch and she loved them both. She has much better pics of them on her blog too if you'd like to see.

After I sent this off it was time to anxiously check my mailbox every day until I got this amazing package all the way from Cara in the UK!

I love it! I really, really wanted an Aeroplane bag and this one is even better than I could have imagined. Cara did an amazing job and I've already had to fend off a few Seattle MQG members from running off with it! Cara also made me a sweet little Lotus Pond pouch and added in some great extras. I've never used a hera marker so I'm excited to try it out. Oh, and she has really adorable tags!

More on the other swaps later. Have a great week!

Allison

July Bee Blocks

I've participated in numerous bees since I started quilting in early 2013. It was a fun way for me to meet online quilty friends and try out lots of different blocks to see what I like. It also provided a convenient excuse to shop for a variety of colors to fill my stash!

Currently, I'm in 2 bees. The first is the Believe circle of do. Good Stitches. We make quilts for a non-profit that gives them to foster kids, My Very Own Blanket. For July, Laura asked us to make this Square in a Square block by Christina at Sometimes Crafter in blues, aquas, and purples. I made 3 this month:

The second bee I'm in is Stash Fabulous. Riain and Jennifer started this bee earlier this year and it's full of a great group of ladies. They have all been so creative too! My month is September so I need to get cracking and decide what I want them to make me. For July, we made Linda scrappy spiderweb blocks with red centers. This is going to be one colorful quilt!

I'm hoping to take my Juki in for a service/cleaning this month so I'll be getting started on my August blocks soon.

Just for fun while we're on the subject of bees.... Here are the 2 finished quilts I've put together for do. Good Stitches in the last year:

Starry Nights

Ocean Current

Allison