I finally finished my last Sew Bee Joyful block that was due last June! O_o
It was supposed to be any kind of XO block, so I used the Pinball Machine block from Modern Blocks. I paper pieced the X in the center to gear up for catching up with my hugely overdue Piece Bee blocks. (dohhhhh)
Kelli asked for a wonky log cabin siggy block, which was nice and quick to sew up.
Now my next latelatelate project is Piece Bee’s wonky house! Gah!
The end of the month totally snuck up on me, and then when I realized I only had two days left in May, I suddenly wanted to make tons of things that weren’t my Sew Bee Joyful bee block. I finally got my butt in gear and made it on Saturday night (technically still in May!) after just a touch of procrastination. We were supposed to make bookshelf blocks, and the only restriction was that we were use the included grey fabric as the background. Since I heard that some envelopes were mailed out with perhaps not quite enough background fabric, I actually drew out a plan so I could cut as conservatively as possible.
We were supposed to include our name, and I thought I’d be all clever and make a cutesy title for the book I was on. But I didn’t notice till after I finished stamping that I made a huge typo! Doh! Can I say that I’m trying to coin a new phrase? Tell your friends! ;>
In other news, I joined in on the (second) handprinted fabric swap! I’ve been having fun carving little stamps out of erasers this past week, and after I finished my bee block, I made two quick boo boo bags for Cosmo, ostensibly because he refuses to put really cold things on his bruises (these bags just get nicely cool — not too cold), but really because I wanted to play with my stamps.
I only had black and red ink pads, so I may have gone just a little bit nuts afterwards ordering more mini Versacraft ink pads. >_< While I was trying to find a place that sells the mini ones, I found one woman who recommended ironing for two or more minutes to heat set the ink (!! I’ve only done it for like twenty or thirty seconds in the past!) and letting it cure for a week or two before washing it. It’s a good thing I found this before I sent my swapmates some failfail fabric!
Bee blocks at the last minute!
Gimmeh cat for Piece Bee — I’m afraid it doesn’t really look like what Jacqueline was expecting when she asked for a cat block, but hopefully it makes her laugh!
Lemons and Limes from Modern Blocks for Sew Bee Joyful:
Front and Center from Modern Blocks — I ran my rotary cutter smack into my finger when I was squaring up the HSTs! >_<
Siggy block to go along with the flying geese block for February:
… and dunzors!
I was in a weird shopping+crafting instant gratification mood, so I bought the Jane Market Bag pattern and whipped a couple up to see how they’d look. Everyone else’s are super cute, but mine came out dopey!
I made them both mostly out of fabric I didn’t choose myself; this one’s got a perfectly nice print that I won in the recent fugly fabric giveaway party, and the red painters’ canvas is from a giveaway from quite a while ago.
This yellow one has a piece of Heirloom that I got in a scrap pack. It’s pretty, but something about the way I put it together with the quilters’ linen makes it look kind of Hawaiian-print-ey.
I know these aren’t great, but I offered my mom one anyway because I figure you can never have too many reusable bags in your trunk, and these would be perfect for not caring how dirty they get. But my mom sent them back home without taking one! Wah! I ended up foisting them off on my aunty — she loves giving things away. heh. Someday I’ll try to make cuter Jane Market bags!
Quite a while ago, I made this big market tote to schlep the kids’ things between my house and my parents’. It’s nothing fancy — I used the hedgehogs because I had a huge piece of it and didn’t want to use my cuter fabric on something for the kids. I’m mean!
Here’s my February Sew Bee Joyful block! It’s from Modern Blocks. At first, I was going to make the double circle of flying geese that’s also in this book (I forget what it’s called now), but then I got lazy. :} I still have to make the siggy block, whoops!
Finally, I received this adoooorable Monsterz bundle that I won from Cloud 9 Fabrics. It’s so cute! I don’t want to unwrap it til I use it, but I know I’m going to make a quilt for my nephew Georgie who’s going to be born this year. Yay!
Holey procrastinatagon! My dad’s birthday was last Wednesday, but I had til our birthday dinner on Saturday to finish his present, and I was putting the last coat on it on Saturday morning.
My sister painted the supermegafantastic pictures, of course; my only job was to scan them and mod podge them onto a tray. I ended up making two trays because on the first one, I didn’t put anything behind the paper, so when the paper got wet with the mod podge, you could totally see through it. On my second attempt, I backed each picture with a blank index card, which worked nicely, but then I didn’t smooth everything down enough, so I got air bubbles. At least I learned for the next time I have to do this — I’m supposed to make another one for my mom’s birthday in April.
My mom’s black linen finally arrived, so I made the zippy bag she requested. It’s not very exciting. 
Also, I fiiiiinally finished my Sew Bee Joyful owl blocks! I made a librarian owl, cause owls are smart. And read books. Yup. Can you tell I stayed up all last night trying to finish my Piece Bee block? Durrr…
These two pictures aren’t to scale, heh. The siggy block is only like 6 inches square.
After being late finishing my October block, I decided that Saturday nights will be my bee-block-making night. We’ll see how long that lasts, heh.
Anyhoo, I finished my November blocks for Corinne. She asked for scrappy charm stars or wonky square-in-squares, and I chose to do the stars. I hope this is scrappy enough — I liked the zig zags a lot, and many of the strips were widths that would have needed to be pieced two or three times to get 5″ squares. Plus, I don’t think I’m skilled enough to make really scrappy scrappy charms look good. :}
Corinne also asked for a signature block, so I took the opportunity to try out Handmade by Alissa‘s super cool October modern block of the month. For some reason, my block makes me think of the 70s… maybe it’s the ovals next to the retro guitars?
I finally made myself a scissors case, yay! When I needed to take it out with me, I had been carrying it around in a tupperware, and last week I noticed that my scissors had poked a bunch of holes in the corners. >_< I made this using scraps from cutting charms for Gen X Quilters’ Japanese Import Swap 2. It would have been really fast, except that I was thinking at first that I wanted to use the hippo selvedge for the loop, and that I should serge the raw edge. I spent an hour playing with my serger, and at the end remembered that I had really cute ribbon that I could use instead. Hah! At least now I know how to thread my serger the not-cheating way, and I know how to make a rolled hem.
I got this lovely bundle in the mail this week (although the cute puppies didn’t come tumbling out of the box, shucks) from Sis Boom. So pretty! Thanks, Madeline!
*moonfare spam*
I finally made my October (>_<) block for Sew Bee Joyful. Charlotte asked for blocks with classic boys' toys, and she gave us a really pretty inspiration board to help us out. I chose to do a ray gun. I'm not really happy with it -- it looks kind of Nerfy to me. Oh! I just realized that it's totally because I made the body orange! Doh... maybe Charlotte won't mind since Nerf toys have been around forever...?
I am happy that I at least learned something while I was making this block. I kept having trouble sewing my pieced sets together — I’d try to eyeball it and fold down the material so I could see if the papers lined up, and a couple of times I made lines on the fabric with my disappearing pen so I could try to match those lines up. Finally, I realized something that I’m sure people who have brains already knew to do: I realized that I could put pins through points in both pieces and line them up that way!
In other news, I have to catch up on thank yous. Today, I want to say: thank you, Michelle and Kate for sending me this awesome set of goodies for the September Bloggers’ Dinner Party! 
Returning to work after maternity leave and a hospital staycation for Cosmo meant that I finished nothing in the past week! I’ve slowly been working on my fussy cut swap picnic blanket, but there’s no way I’ll be able to finish it in time for Mr. Yazoo’s birthday picnic this weekend. Shucks!
However, I did get to have fun making my September blocks for the Sew Bee Joyful bee. Linda asked for wonky log cabins, and for this first one, I faithfully followed the tutorial she provided. I made a mistake, though — I trimmed too close in the bottom right corner! Doh.
After I finished the first block, I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough to make a second one so I liberally added in my own fabric. Hopefully Linda won’t mind!
These are the scraps of Linda’s fabric that I had left over after the two blocks. I’m happy — they’re decently small, so I think I did a pretty good job of using up as much of her fabric as I could.
I think the selvedges said Lecien, but I kept thinking of these fabrics as Dr. Seuss at Easter time.
I made a test teapot block this morning! I used Pink Penguin’s awesome pattern and tutorial, with the pattern enlarged to 150%. It came out to round about 7.75″ x 9.5″ and took me three hours, which included cutting out all the pattern pieces (both the paper and freezer paper ones).
Hoooopefully, I’ll be able to ask my quilting bee-mates to make these for my month… I think a whole quilt of these would be fun!
Edit: Here’s a picture of the freezer paper I have. I got it in the cling wrap / ziploc bags aisle in my local grocery store.
