Two down

I've had the most wonderful break over the Christmas 2014 period. For almost three weeks I've been secreted away in my sewing cave with DVDs, cricket and champagne in abundance and lots of projects cascading around me. It's been a lovely summer so far.
I've made an additional four blocks for my Swoon Quilt - which was my bee block when I was Queen early last year. Now I have 16 and they only need to be sashed and joined. Here's a sneak peek at the blocks.

Swoon quilt WIP

And happy news is that I was able to bind two projects that have been sitting in my "in tray" all year. My Bear's Paw and my Georgetown Circles are now COMPLETO!

Traditional Bear's Paw

Georgetown Geese

This morning while I was exercising (my elliptical cross trainer just happens to be buried in my sewing room) I counted 7 projects that I could feasibly finish in 2015. It will be interesting to see if that is what eventuates!

October 2014

It's my month again!!  I'm sooo happy with my block choice. It's called Nosegay and here's the block I made as an example.

At the time of writing I've only received 3 of my blocks but I have faith that the rest will follow suit and I'll post a photo of them when they are all in. I honestly can't wait to turn this in to a quilt.

Our October paper pieced star queen requested red and turquoise and I truly felt that I was hitting my straps with this paper piecing malarkey so I confidently pumped out this little beauty from Carol Doak's book 50 Fabulours Paper Pieced Stars. It's called Pennsylvania and I love it!

September 2014

In the first hive we are now in our last month. Oh no! Where did a year go?  The final queen bee for hive #1 selected a block made entirely of half square triangles called Diamond Ripples. The colours on request were aqua, red and grey.  Wow one hive down and 2 winding up before Christmas - I won't know myself!!
This is my Diamond Ripples.

Over at the second hive I didn't even realise it was my turn to be queen and kindly another bee volunteered to jump up the queue and fill in for me. Her block choice was called Modern Star and Pinwheel and came up like this.  You can find the free pattern on Pinterest here.

Our September Star queen had chosen greys and greens and I was feeling adventurous so she received this little beauty.

August 2014

It's AUGUST(!!) and the queen bee wants a scrappy heart so that she can make a quilt like this one.  You'll find a link to download the free pattern on the link.

In our second hive the queen posted everyone two 2 1/2" squares of a gorgeous red fabric to use at the centre of two blocks that we were to make for her this month.  The brief was very simple. Surround the first red square with 2 1/2" white, then surround that with 2 1/2" black. Reverse and repeat.  It comes up a little like this.

Our paper pieced stars queen was a purple fanatic. I have to confess, I don't have a great deal of true royal, bright purples. Mine all tend to be shades of plum and bordering on reds. However I managed to find enough bits and pieces to pull together this block and I felt brave enough to attempt some pretty fine seams. 

July 2014

"Lucky pieces" block was the call out for the July hive. Bright vibrant colours from our scrap bag. One of the beautiful things about these bees is that you don't have to have mountains of any particular fabric. Just a generally healthy stash will get you through.
Here's my Lucky pieces.

Hive 2's queen issued a mercifully simple PLUS block pattern with the instruction to make the background quite neutral ("low volume" is the terminology used these days) and a vibrant plus. I could have happily made 100 of these.

Over in the paper pieces stars hive it was my turn to be queen again - yay!!  I asked for and star pattern made in chades of dark chocolate, milk chocolate, coffee, caramel, toffee, jaffa, honeycomb, raspberry and vanilla in any combination with the same colours/tones for background. Stark white only for highlights. I want to see if I end up with a quilt I'd like to lick!  Well, I haven't made my own block yet but I'm pretty chuffed with the blocks that came in. Here they are:

June 2014

In June our queen decided on this utterly gorgeous block called Scrap Jar Stars.

And here's the tutorial.

In hive #2 we were asked to make a Moonlight Star block in one purple fabric plus white. It's from a FREE McCall's Quilting pattern available here.  Here's my contribution in a fabric that hasn't photographed very purple but it is a rich dark plum shade.

And last but not least, our paper pieced star queen wanted "bright scrappy stars with white tone on tone background". I was really excited to break out this block for her.

May 2014

Our May queen requested a Card Trick block which I was delighted about since I have the perfect fabric in my stash.  Here's the result.

In the second hive we were give free reign over the pattern - as long as it was a red heart on a blue background. Nice and simple.

And in paper pieced star land we got our pink and green scraps out.