Finish it Friday - some quilt flimsies using up bee blocks!

In the middle of our holiday we had a few days at home while Maggie, our puppy, was having her neutering operation.  It was a good time to do it, as we had to keep the other two away from her for a few days, in case they would go at her stitches and she was able to keep me company, while I caught up on a few things and not get too bored all on her ownio!

While sorting my stuff to tidy up before my cousin came to visit, I found some stash bee blocks made for me, from stash bee 2014!  I had picked the Spring Blossom quilt block by Charise Creates and didn't really have a plan in mind for them.  As always with Bee's you get unexpected things, sometimes blocks are a little too big or a little too small, or an odd colouring to the other blocks like the navy centre one above.

I had recently bought Amy Gibsons Quilt Block Cookbook with 50 block patterns in it.  Having been a big fan of hers since I learned how to piece blocks on her free Craftsy Class Block of the Month 2012, I knew I was going to really enjoy her book.  The blocks are fun but even better are the 7 layouts she gives for using some of the 50 blocks, to make a not so traditional sampler quilt.  The few pages at the end of the book got me thinking and made buying the whole book so worthwhile.  So I took apart a version of my star crossing block above, in navy and lemon, and used the pieces to frame the flowers.

I managed to get a small cot quilt out of both and really like that the navy in the squares now makes the dark flower centre work!  There are 5 blocks left still, so I had a go at putting them into a flower garden of my own and another of Amy's layouts from the books using columns of colour.

I think I am going to go with the layout from the book below but would like to come back to the garden for another go at it as I think there is something there.  I can complicate designs and sometimes I think simple is best!

Not having gotten around to that one yet, I did revisit the blocks I made in 2012, that were still sitting in a box!  I made the mistake of buying the cheapest fabric I could for my first quilt and not really liking it much, I still liked the blocks but didn't overly love it enough to finish the quilt.  I now only buy fabric I love and try not to think too much on the price (unless its Liberty at 24 a metre!)

Using Amy's celestial layout, I picked the blocks that I thought would work well together and added in a lot of Kona Snow, that I had on hand on a bolt. (I bought a whole bolt of Snow and White and it was the best decision ever as you can get right to making when inspiration strikes!)

At our last branch meeting, I showed my two new finished quilt tops - all from my WIP box and no new blocks needed!

And for the stuff I should have been making?  Finished my Snowflake Shimmer quilt (QAL with Quilting Jet Girl) and there is good chance I will have this finished for Christmas!  Made lots of progress on my round on Erin's Round Robin quilt!  200+ paper pieced sub-units later...

This seemed like a great idea when I first started it.  When I realised how long it would take me, I did think twice but it felt like the right thing for the quilt and I didn't want to let Erin down by doing something not as good so I just had to get on with it!

Nearly there now!

So a bunch of finishes and a lot of work in progress!  Happy Friday everybody!

WIP Wednesday - Technicolor Galaxy

This years Block of the Month at Pile O'Fabric is the fantastic Tecnicolor Galaxy quilt design. Maybe it was the rainbow or maybe the space connection but this one really caught my eye and I knew I was going to have to sign up for it!

Alyssa's BOM designs are written with the aim of skill building and they are always really well explained. Plus Alyssa offered the Modern Quilters Ireland group a discount if we signed up with more than 5 people which we did!  For the month of January it was gathering materials and printing templates, which I decided instead to do as I went block by block and January was crazy busy too, so I basically didn't do anything on this at all!

Then in the Facebook group people started sharing their fabric pulls and Alyssa had given us a blank drawing to colour in and they were all so gorgeous, I felt a little guilty for not getting into this properly!  So for the last few evenings, I've been colouring in too!

During the Color Intensive Class I took with Stitched in Color, we approached colour theory from a mood or feeling we were trying to create and used words to help focus on the colours to choose for the project.   I asked myself, what is it about this quilt that I am drawn too?  The cosmic aspect had me thinking about the night sky and that sense of wonder & amazement you get when you look through a telescope and see Jupiter for the first time or seeing images of the aurora and Hubble photos of the universe. So wonder became my word of choice for this quilt and I am always filled with that when I see photos like these.

Images from google image search "Nebula"

These images came from a google search for Nebula and I eventually chose these four as my colour inspiration for the quilt.   Using photoshop I coloured in the drawing we were given, starting from the centre outwards and came up with this:

So now my original intentions of following the rainbow colour scheme that attracted me to the quilt design in the first place have gone out the window.  I had planned on using my stash fabrics on a low volume background too!  Now, I'm using my Kona colour card to help pull fabrics for my dark sky version.  I have little to no jewel tones in my stash and am going to need a bucket load of blue!  And I was doing so well at not buying too much fabric this year too.  I think I can break my fabric diet for this one though.

Linking up to