Tuesday, June 4, 2013

June Queen Bee

YAY! June has arrived which means that I am Queen Bee for the month.

I have chosen the Road to Fortune Block which I stumbled upon over at the Blueberry Patch during the Sew Mama Sew Competition period.

As much as I loved the block the way Cathy had made it, white is really an impractical colour in my household, so I decided to change the background colour to a light grey. The other colours are to be what I call bright "Hot" colours in pinks, blues, greens, purples, yellows and oranges.  I was luckily enough to be able to use mostly scraps on this block. If you need some scrap colours, just give me a yell and I will pop some in the post for you.

This quilt is going to be for me! Something that I can snuggle up under when I am watching TV or reading a book and also something bright and cheery to decorate my hospital bed when I spend time in there with my Asthma etc.


You can find a template here - although I found I had to save the file to my computer and then reopen that file in order to print it out. If anybody knows how to fix this - please let me know.

Since I couldn't find any written instructions for this block, I have done a very basic set below, but I am taking under my wing that you already know how to do paper piecing.  Kristy from Quiet Play has some great tutorials on paper piecing if you would like to learn more. 


Trim the paper down and arrange the templates in correct order. I also wrote a larger B & C on them to make sure that I had them right.


My advice before sewing would be to pick out your fabrics and place them roughly on the template. This way you can play with the colourway, making sure that two of the same colour are not placed side by side.

As you can see from the photo, I was eager to get sewing and learnt the hard way.


Paper piece all of the blocks!


Time to join the triangles together to form 4 smaller squares. I made sure that I lined up the outer strips.


Pins are a must, as they help keep everything in place. Yep learnt that one the hard way too.


Once sewn, remove the paper from the seam.


Iron an open seam on each of the four blocks. Be careful not to burn your fingertips. 


Now sew the top two and the bottom two squares together. Once again making sure that you use pins to hold it all together with the outer ring lining up.


Iron the seam open.


Sew the top and the bottom pieces together, you should know the drill by now, pin, sew, iron! LOL.


Ta Da - your back should look like this ^^^^.

Please don't remove any of the paper backing other then the seam parts. I have learnt in the past that blocks can stretch once the paper has been removed, so I prefer to leave them on until the entire top has been sewn together.


Now you should have one completed block!

Thanks for helping me make my Bee block. Plus a huge thanks to Cathy from the Blueberry Patch for the inspiration and my Quilt Group Girls who were my sounding board for colouring.


3 comments:

  1. Looking forward to this one! Glad you're planning a quilt just for you!

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    Replies
    1. Me too! I am starting to get super excited! LOL

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  2. Oh thanks for this great tutorial Kelly. I love the sparkly hot colours of this one and glad that you get to keep this one for yourself.

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