April Bee Blocks

Squeaking in just under the wire: Mailed on April 30. : )

Do. Good Stitches
Natalie of Greenleaf Goods asked for these delightfully bright and springy string blocks for the Love circle of Do. Good Stitches. These are very much like some of the scrappy potholders I made as Christmas gifts this year. so I have a little experience with teeny string blocks. Natalie put a little wonk into her blocks, so I did the same on my first one, but didn't particularly like how mine looked, so my second block is just straight-up strings. I just love the colors Natalie asked for, they are positively yummy.

I also have to thank Natalie, because I won her giveaway last week! I won a gorgeous stack of Freshcut and Pop Garden by Heather Bailey. (Unbeknownst to Natalie, I had Freshcut in my swapping ISO list! Woo hoo!) My fabric came from Natalie the day I started the blocks, so how could I not use some of it? This means Natalie will be getting a little of that fabric right back in the form of these string blocks. So I guess it's true that what goes around comes around ... literally. : )

{Sew} Beautiful
Brooke of Pitter Putter Stitch asked for this Circle of Geese block. Since I paper-pieced New York Beauty blocks for my DQS swap quilt, I thought this Circle of Geese block would be cake. Um ... I thought wrong. I had to unsew several pieces on my first quadrant and re-do them because they weren't big enough. I don't know why this was so much more challenging than my New York Beauty blocks—maybe because the pieces were such irregular sizes? Or because the pieces are larger, so the strange angles threw things off even more? Whatever the reason, it took some time to get accustomed to the paper-piecing for this block. But once I did, things went smoothly, and I love the result. All of us bee members had slightly different color/fabric combinations, so I'm looking forward to seeing the quilt all put together. Click here to see more in the Flickr group. Edited to add: This block was made using a free paper-piecing pattern available here.

String Me Along
Fran asked for a modified bento block in these bright batiks for String Me Along. I have not worked with batiks before, so it was fun to get a chance to do that. I was surprised to find that the back of a batik is sometimes as intense in color as the front! Fortunately I don't think I sewed any pieces on backwards. : ) Fran asked us not to cut up our blocks into quarters—I'm assuming she'll be doing that—so here's mine as I mailed it out to her.

I'm linking up to Sew Modern Monday—check out more modern creations there!