A great start to the year

I'm pleased to say that there was a little sewing spurt going on here yesterday, and today.

Firstly, being a member of my first virtual quilting bee (Free Bee), on Flickr, with a fantastic group of very talented quilters, I decided to get down and get the first months block sewn up.  This block is for Krista from Poppyprints.  The block is based on this Flickr photo and we have a choice of four different Kona solid fabrics.  

I chose the Seafoam colour for the background and dipped into my scrap bag for suitable fabrics to compliment the lovely soft bluey green colour.

I hope Krista likes the block and with the fabric that's left over I might just make another block for her, keep watching as it might appear here on the blog.

I've also pulled scraps out of the bag to make little scrappy panels that can be cut as I go to create a sample / tester block with could be the basis for my block request when it's my month in the Free Bee Virtual Quilting Bee.

These are the scrap panels I've made so far - I've tried to be very free with how these scrappy panels have been made by pulling scraps out of the bag and just sewing together, sometimes using a ruler and rotary cutter to trim the fabric and sometimes just the cutter.

Now the panels are ready to be place on the background fabric - a Kona solid, I'm using the Pepper colour here.  Again it's the 'hourglass' block, a freeform block, no ruler required, cut a lovely curvy line.  Go here to see a tutorial.  Four cuts later, four seams sewn later and here's the basis for the first section of the block.

Next I'm going to add an elliptical shape between each of the 'hourglass' shapes - just two cuts required for this section of the block, and once the seams are stitched and ironed down - this is how it looks.  Mistake number 1, it looks like this will take a little practice and that there will be too much wasted background fabric, so I've decided to omit this shape from the block and hope that it makes it easier, but that the block is still aesthetically pleasing.

I've worked along this one section of half a FQ and even with the faux pas with the elliptical shape I've been able to get 3 'hourglass' blocks completed, now to get the other scrappy sections added to the next half FQ fabric strip 

and I'm hoping that the final strip will be a total of 7 'hourglass' blocks