Stash Bee Blocks

I finished up the second quadrant for the Stash Bee yesterday. I also made an extra component piece and will be sending the queen bee the rest of my cut background fabric.

I feel a little bad that I didn't finish the whole 24" block, but it was putting a massive crimp in my style and blocking me from doing anything else. So it had to go. Two more blocks left to make for November and then I will bid the Stash Bee a fond farewell. I will not be participating next year, because newborn (first one at that, so I expect some serious quilting downtime until I get the hang of things).

Also got some work done on my leader/ender project. Here are a few more blocks (I did not finish these yesterday, but I did work on the project).

Finally, I got the HSTs done for the DCMQG Charity Quilt and am sending those off today as well. I am hoping to get back to the Charming Kate Spain quilt soon, as it's just begging me to play, hanging in all its rainbow-y glory on the design walls. Here are the first two blocks which I finished over the last two weeks:

My Current WIPs

So here's what I've been working on one weekend at a time.

My sister's baby quilt is finally basted. I had to run to Joann's the night before Halloween (huge mistake!) to get basting pins because I couldn't find mine. Or rather, that was the night I finally couldn't take not having some anymore and ran out to get them. I literally had a box in my hand two minutes after walking into the store and then stood in line for over half an hour to pay for my one box of pins. Since all of my sister's baby showers are now done, here it is in its full glory (minus elephant and birds):

Unfortunately, I have not yet found the motivation to start quilting it. So it's just sitting folded over the back of my sewing room chair. Oh yeah, my sister is expecting a boy that they are going to call Henry.

So in my effort to find something to keep myself busy while I wait for my quilting motivation to arrive, I pulled out all of my Kate Spain charm packs and took out all of the duplicate fabrics. I am using the following: 35 pieces of Honey Honey, 40 pieces of Daydream, 19 pieces of Serenade, 40 pieces of Cuzco, 38 pieces of Terrain, 36 pieces of Good Fortune. Because this did not add up to even close to 256 (I blame the Serenade), I also pulled out my charm pack of Sunnyside even though I'm already using a Layer Cake of that for another quilt, which garnered me an additional 40 charms, and then I filled out the remaining 8 pieces with some loose charms of Verna, of which I have a FQ Stack that I'll be making into a quilt someday. I sorted everything into colors and arranged them roughly in rainbow order (had some brown, pink, and grey to fit in).

I have sewn together the first two 4x4 block. Once I get all the blocks done, I am going to decide if I want to sash the blocks. I'm thinking of sashing them in 2.5" black strips to take the finished quilt from 72" square to about 82" square, which seems like a better size to me. But we'll see how I feel when I get the blocks done. I kind of like the way it looks without sashing.

Finally I've been working on my (late) October bee blocks for the Stash Bee. Here is the first quadrant complete:

Even though I've completed the first quadrant, it took forever. Something about my quarter inch seams is off, because the pieces are turning out too large, and each quadrant requires 20 pieces. I've cut all of the background pieces, but I'm not sure I can really convince myself to finish another three quadrants. Maybe I'll just finish one more (I've been making two blocks for each person and the finished block is 24" square, so I think two quadrants is plenty), and then send the queen bee the rest of the background pieces and whatever other odds and ends I've completed.

The November blocks are super simple 12" churn dash blocks, and I'm actually looking forward to those, but first I want to get this one out of the way.