Second Finish in 2019 and more!

I finished my second WIP from 2018!  Last post, I reported that I found time to sandwich my Save the Bees quilt, renamed The Plight of Bees. I have been diligently working on completing the 2018 WIPs and I was able to quilt and bind this quilt this week! I used a FMQ meandering loop to mimic the flight of bees. 

All the fabrics used in this quilt were from my stash! The bee fabric was gifted to me from a friend. It was used for table linens for a baby shower.  

The pattern is Pinwheel Puzzle from McCall's Quilting March/April 2018 issue. 

I added the words 'Save The Bees' using letters from the Spelling Bee book by Lori Holt.

The quilt finishes at 58" x 68.5".

I'm linking up to Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finish or Not Friday at Busy Hands Quilts.

I finally pulled fabrics from my stash for the Optical Illusion quilt. 

Here are my blues.

4 of the 5 fabrics were wrapped in my mini bolts I recently made to organize my out of control fabric stash. The one 2nd from the right, I pulled from my stash that was previously organized and folded to size around a ruler then piled by color in an old dresser. How do you organize your stash?

I made 2 more charity blocks for the Covered in Love charity sponsored by 

Kat & Cat Quilts. Now I have 4 to send off in the mail soon. 

Finally, I got The Quilter's Paper-Pieced Workbook out from the library.

I found several block that I really liked. I decided to do one of the easy ones as a second RSC block. January is red month so...

I will be using low volume fabric with the color of the month in the center and fabric scraps for the starburst. 

I will Link up to Scrappy Saturday over at So Scrappy. 

This has been a productive week with Monday being a day off of school to recognize the holiday celebrating MLK, Jr. 

What have you been working on?

Progress Update

The Quiet Play Pattern Club blocks for January were released a bit early!

I was excited to get started! 

I had already sorted through and organized by color all my solids (mostly Kona) so I was able to get started. I downloaded the patterns and printed off 2 of the paper pieced blocks. I will be making the background of the word blocks in a color with the letters Kona Snow. The object blocks will have a Kona Snow background and a rainbow of colors in the block. Here are my January blocks!

The background is Kona Hibiscus.

There are 17 colors (besides Kona Snow) for the rainbow spool of thread!

I still haven't completely finalized my fabric pull for the Block of the Month Optical Illusion blocks. This will be as much as possible from my stash. 

I'm rethinking the Scandinavian Flowers as I don't think I am ready for this level of applique and it would require a fabric purchase.  I will still download the monthly patterns for later. 

Instead, I will try reverse applique using the book, Dutch Treat, that I purchased many years ago. 

I also previously bought fabric for this project. Must use what I got! I won't do all the blocks (some are very complicated) but will pick some of the easier blocks. I will prepare this project for my trip in February. 

Here is a peek at the start of my medallion quilt. 

So many HSTs! 276 to be exact!

This week, I carved out some time to sandwich my Save the Bees quilt, a leftover from 2018. I plan to do meandering loops over the top of the quilt to mimic the flight of the bees. I am thinking of naming this quilt, 

The Plight of Bees. 

Lastly, I will leave you with a sweet picture of my cute grandson! The hat he is wearing is one that I knitted from a vintage pattern. It is a bit big but ties to stay on! It is very soft as it is knitted with bamboo yarn. 

Under my needle

After finishing my Rhythm in Blues quilt and catching up on my RSC blocks, I had time to start a new project. 

I challenge myself to work from what's in my stash as much as possible. 

In my stash, I was gifted a large amount of fabric with bees on it. 

Did I ever mention that my husband is a hobby bee keeper with some friends? We have been around bees and harvesting honey for many years. I'm sure most of you have heard of the situation with bees dying and campaigns to save the bees. So I decided to use the 'bee' fabric to make a quilt. 

I found the pattern Pinwheel Puzzle by Elaine Theriault in the March/April 2018 issue of McCall's Quilting magazine. I made it a bit smaller than the pattern and then added the words Save the Bees on the side. I used the book Spelling Bee by Lori Holt for the letters. The top is finished but it needs to wait for quilting until I finish what went under my needle this morning...Blush!

I pieced this quilt back in May but it has been waiting for quilting. I pushed the Harry Potter, Rhythm in Blues and KF Mini ahead of it so it starting nagging begging me to start quilting it. Yesterday, I got busy and sandwiched it and this morning it went under the needle. I quilted the spirals in the centers of the 4 patch blocks. Borders and sashings are next. 

I'm linking up to Finished or Not Fridays at Busy Hands Quilt, Can I get a Whoop Whoop? at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Off the Wall Friday at Creations.

Here is my entry for Pets on Quilts 2018! 

Nellie loves to sit on the quilt and rest her head as she watches out the window! Feel free to vote for her! Head over to see all the cute furry friends!