Stash Bee - December 2012

These blocks are for Jackie, a fellow Oregonian, and December's Queen Bee.  When I saw Jackie's post about her tutorial for these blocks, my reaction was "Phew, back in familiar territory."  The last two months the Stash Bee blocks called for paper piecing and applique, respectively, which were completely unfamiliar territory for me.

The block is called Arkansas Crossroads and were delightful to make. The funnest part was picking out the fabrics.  Jackie wanted the blocks to be completely scrappy, so there are no fabric repeats.

Now I'm off to cruise WiP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!

The First Quilt Top of the Year!

I'm off to a good start! I want to keep the quilting simple, so I hope to post the deets on this quilt next week once I'm completely finished.

Bliss Sampler Top - Finished!

I was so close to being done piecing this top for a very long time, but I was stuck on the flying geese border.  So, approximately 136 flying geese and two borders later, I am finally done piecing this thing!

Full quilt top on a king size bed.

The pattern is from Lynette Jensen's Thimbleberries Block by Block to Beautiful Quilts.  Each block ended up being 12 inches finished, but the borders sized the quilt up to queen/king sized.  The book itself is kinda country-ish in the feel of its projects, so I used a brighter color palette than suggested. 

One of my favorite blocks.

The fabrics are all from Bonnie and Camille's Bliss collection, which I just love.  These cuts were the ones available at my LQS when I first began selecting fabrics for this quilt.  Since then, I've been able to obtain a few more (understatement) prints.  I'm also hoarding this year's collection, Ruby, and will hopefully debut something from that collection as well.

Flying geese border.

My next challenge will be how to quilt this thing.  It's huge!  I don't know if I can do it on my domestic machine, so maybe now is the time to break out and send it to a professional quilter.  It would be lovely to get some custom quilting, but I'm balking at how much it will cost.  It makes me wonder how places like the Pottery Barn and Garnet Hill can sell "hand made" quilts for a few hundred bucks.

Border detail.

I'm glad I forced myself to finish this top.  I started cutting for my next project, an idea which has been on my mind for several months now.  Happy quilting!

Another pretty block.