Leaves, stars and feathers

The great bee block catch up has begun! Well, June is ticked off the list at least - so only a couple more to go ;o)

First up is a block for Jodi for our Scrappy? Sew Bee It! bee. Jodi designed the block herself, and gave us this photo as inspiration for choosing colours - the intention being that her bee quilt will hang below the apples. Jodi is a fellow AMH fanatic, so I used a few of my Good Folks scraps for three of the petals, along with the Field Study print which is in my Forest quilt. I absolutely love her idea for this quilt - I'm a little jealous already ;o)

Next up are a couple of star blocks for Julie in the AusMod bee. I must admit these put me way out of my comfort zone - the colours and prints are not something I would normally choose to work with at all. But having seen the blocks that have been created so far, I think it's going to be a really gorgeous and feminine quilt. The first one was designed on the fly, the second is a paper pieced one (made using Faith's whirling star tutorial). 

As a reward to myself for being a good bee mate (hehehe), I did a bit more quilting on the forest quilt. Feathers around the feathers. This is my most favourite block I have ever made, and I didn't want to detract from the piecing too much, so I used white 50wt Aurifil to blend in with the background. Looking at it now, I'm not sure it was the best choice of motif for this block - but I seriously love quilting feathers like this and just couldn't resist. I think you'll see these popping up in my quilting more and more :o)

The rest of this week will be spent catching up on some more bee blocks, and making some doll dresses for my wee girl's upcoming third birthday in a few weeks. I'm a little in denial that my baby is turning three - although admittedly I'm pretty excited about making her some dresses, even if they're just for her doll. Oh, and the wonderful Rebecca has asked me to do a review of my sewing machine for her Sewing Machine Adultery series which I'm excited about - I'll let you know when it's up on her blog so you can read all about why I love my Bernina!

Hope you're all having a great week. 

xx Jess

Feathers {Forest QAL}

Over the last week I've been working on the second block in the Forest QAL - feathers. I honestly think this is one of the most beautiful paper pieced patterns I've ever seen. If I thought I could do it with my sanity intact, I'd make a whole quilt of these.

Fabric selection for these was so very tricky. I looked at countless feather photos online trying to decide what palette I wanted to use, but nothing really clicked for me. I decided to make up a feather (not based on a real bird feather) but use colours that could be found in nature.

I'm pretty happy with how it came out - it doesn't sit especially flat, but I think once I remove the paper (after piecing it into the quilt top) and lots of steam, it (hopefully) should be okay.

xx Jess