Healed and back in action!

Technically, I've been okay since about the last week of July. Technically. But there was so much knitting and sewing to catch up on that I've only just sat down now to tell you about it!

Let's see. First, I finished my blocks for Sarah of Sew What Sherlock. You *may* remember we started a bee a loooong time ago. But life got in the way for several of our members and so things fell by the wayside for a bit. But we're gathering momentum once again that will hopefully see us through to the end!

Sarah's quilt is going to have a bunch of paper pieced arrows (the pattern is her own design and available for purchase) with low volume background blocks with a variety of shapes and patterns.

The whole this is very scrappy. It's going to be so lovely when it's all put together! Above are my background contributions.

 A shot of the arrows in their entirety. Please excuse the feet ;)

And a sort of close up of my favorite block. I just love pinwheels.

I've been working on other stuff, too. Photos to come soooon! :D It feels so good to have 2 working arms again, I can't tell you...

Fierce Quilters Progress

Yes, it's true! I have finally made some real progress on Allison's quilt. She wanted a sampler style quilt with geometric blocks in jewel tones.

Here is my contribution:

I'm really not sure how I feel about the block on the top right, but I didn't want the fabric to be wasted so I'm sending it on. If it doesn't end up fitting in, it can always go back to Allison as an extra or something!

The diamond block on the bottom was whipped up by me using Quilt Assistant. I'm starting to get the hang of the program, I think. But it'll be a while before I'm designing anything complicated, for sure! It's just 6 simple diamond blocks sewn together. I really wanted the diamond part to be a continuous piece of fabric, so paper piecing was the way to go. I really love how it turned out!

Here are all the current blocks all together:

Aren't they fun?? They will be moving along to Audrey as soon as I can get to the post office!

Oh, and because I keep talking about my new house and don't have any pictures, here you go:

Just the outside for now, but at least it's something!

Also, if you're interested, I'm sharing a little tutorial and a couple of designs for scrappy plus blocks over on the Stash Bee blog this month. Go check it out if you're interested! Here are my samples for the month:

I'm so excited to see what everyone makes!

Hope your week is off to a good start :) Mine definitely is!

Fierce Quilters 2014

Today I'm going to tell you about a little idea I had that grew into something really cool...

I joined a bee last year and it was okay. The problem was it was on Threadbias and while I kept up and mailed all my blocks, I just didn't really get into the platform. As a result, I didn't communicate much with the other members except to say my block was mailed or if it was going to be late. It just wasn't as fun as I thought it would be because other than Threadbias, there was no other place to communicate really and while I now follow a few new blogs, I still feel like I didn't make friends all that well. Which makes me sad :( But I just can't get into using Threadbias.. it's a great site, but I just don't have the time to devote to using it effectively.

So I had an idea. Why not invite some people I already talk with online (and in person in one case!) and think are really super awesome to start a bee with me? We already have avenues of communication set up, so there would be no new platform to get used to checking regularly. Plus, I already knew these ladies would be my super awesome best quilting friends if we all lived in the same city (so everyone move to Tucson, k?). Thus, the Fierce Quilters Bee was born.

We decided to set it up as a Traveling Quilt kind of thing (a little like this one here) and keep it small and laid back- fluid mailing dates and few rules. Basically everyone chose their own rules and as a result, we 6 very different quilts being made this year! Here are some (not great) pictures of what I sent off in January to the lovely Audrey.

Initial fabric pull

First few blocks

Final send off

 I was in the middle of a move when I was making these, so I didn't have time (or know the box with my camera in it) to take decent pictures before I sent them off. But you get the idea :) Audrey actually has a little preview of what she's been adding up on her blog today if you're interested!

I can't wait to see where this bee goes. We have such a fabulous group! Here are the others if you want to go check out their awesomeness:

Sarah (Sew What Sherlock)
Kitty (Life of Couch)
Allison (Sew into my 20s)
Gwen (The Rainbow Revolts)

You can also watch our progress over on Instagram (#fiercequiltersbee2014). This is going to be an exciting year!