Sunday, December 16, 2018

Hooray! All Done: Bow Tie Flimsy






Making my October Bow Ties was both easier and harder than I had thought. Making a visual plan was the harder part. All our beds are king size so naturally I should want to make it fit the beds, right? Though the layout looks angled, the 8.5" blocks are actually easily set straight on, allowing the diagonals to be created by the color placement. Once I figured that out, I made this diagram:
Twelve by twelve makes 102" square, so 144 blocks in 12 different colors (1 color per round) will be needed. Dividing the blues and greens into darks and lights and counting very carefully, I made 50  more blocks which included 12 pinks (my 12th color). Then at the end found that I was 3 reds and 3 light greens short! It is a mystery how my counting could have been so inaccurate. 

I enjoyed every one of the fabrics that were made for me and tried to keep them positioned in the center areas as much as possible. Good thing too, since the finished size exceeded my two quilt holders' reach! When finished, this quilt will go on my bed and I will remember each of you with a smile. Many thanks.


The Horrible Hamlet of Halloween Hollow

In hindsight, things went from very very bad to way way worse in the above mentioned Horrible Hamlet of Halloween Hollow in October and November 2018....In all fairness it started in mid-September when a medium-sized white and green haired granny (me) opted to take a stroll down a spooky spine-chilling path.   I posted a picture of an itsy-bitsy haunted house on Instagram in Stash Beehive 2  with a roadmap for my bee-mates to design and paper-piece a little haunted house  based on one I found on-line at Sophie Junction.    It was ghastly, it was grim....it was guaranteed to be great!

My first hint that the perfectly ordinary-seeming folks in my Beehive were just a tiny bit more macabre than most was when the following haunted house popped out of my mailbox, thanks to @tracysbitsnpieces.



Yikes!  The outside walls are camoflagued with humongous hydrangeas and vicious venus flytraps poised to munch on anybody who brushes up against them unawares.  I see jinormous grinning green bats flapping around in a purple sky and OMGoodness Gracie, what kind of hideous chartreuse creature with three big green eyeballs is guarding the front door?  Needless to say I won't be opening that door or closing MY eyes for a week at least. However, I'm sad to say this not the least of the shocking stuff that I've seen recently.

The next perilous package that got dropped onto my dining room table is so much more than a haunted house....Basically its a boulevard of  badness.  Two nightmare-ish houses side by side. My heart nearly stopped when I realized this dreadful duo was courtesy of @thegrinch1964 and @cocoaquilts.



At first glance these two houses don't give off a particularly gruesome vibe. It wasn't until much later that I recalled the story of an especially wicked witch with a very sweet welcoming house on the outside AND a huge cast iron pot to stuff Hansel and Gretel into on the inside.  They say you can never judge a book (or a house) by its cover so I decided to take another  look.  Oh yes, these two houses are very scary indeed.  There is plenty of weird wizardry at work here.  Those black dots could be any kind of horrible wee winged beastie falling from the sky; there are great hideous orangy-yellow vines obscuring the walls and OMG there is a massive mouse riding a bicycle--a freakin bicycle-- in the upstairs window!  How could you not be terrified by this?  And as for the second house... Did you see those ferocious furry feline familiars in the window ---- obviously a witch or a warlock is casting spells and up to no good there.  Need I say more....I thought not.

The next time I dared to sneak a peak into my mailbox I was aghast to see what @mcallisterwench pieced together for my purview.





This one is truly awe-inspiringly awful.  Outside are immense ugly spiderwebs that could perchance be home to hundred pound spiders.  And inside....more bats, this time in the belfry (do houses have belfrys?  This one does!) The walls are drenched and doused with deadly potions in pretty pastel vials.  There are multiple skulls and assorted unattached leg bones on the floor upstairs and in the front doorway, a mummy (definitely NOT the kind who married daddy) defies anyone to enter. FYI nobody with a lick of sense would want to enter that house.

But that was not the end of the awe-fullness.  No it was not.  The other day, I tentatively, cautiously and oh-so-carefully opened my mailbox again and this package of patchwork was waiting for me.



I truly don't know where to start with this.  I'm pretty sure this is @lmnop864's attempt to scare me to half to death.  Alfred Hitchcock would be proud to live in this little orange house, or perhaps he'd want to share it with Edgar Allen Poe.  I'm really curious how that little black raven could sleep with all those birds dive bombing him and his bro's too.  That's probably the scariest jack-o-lantern I ever did see grinning in the upstairs window; and I betcha those tiny black hoot owls are hiding in the doorway because they had the feathers frightened off them.

So what could be worse than you've already seen.  Check out the gruesome twosome that @jentexas06 foisted onto me via USPS and Canada Post just the other day.



Yup, more of those winged wee beasties dropping out of the sky onto a haunted house covered with noxious purple leaves and vines.  I don't know for sure, but a quick glance in the window suggests that there is a witch's cauldron burning and bubbling and spewing out trouble somewhere inside. But the scariest thing by far about the first house is the front door.  It looks like a thermometer or a ruler, or some other unholy gadget hanging upside down.....seriously nightmare inducing stuff.



House number two, also looks like it might be on fire, but its hard to tell for sure because its likely someone put a hex spell on the front door. Those are some creepy letters and not a single word to be found anywhere.   I'm very afraid that the homeowner is something of an advanced mathematics wizard because the 2nd floor is papered in the writings of a demented geometry ghoul.

The next house that clattered onto my kitchen countertop was this dreadful dwelling from @sevenoakstreetquilts.



Plainly this house is in an enchanted forest, possibly its the White Witch of Narnia's residence. I'm positive the posies growing on the outside walls are beyond being bewitched and their toothy grins are truly terrifying.  Whoever lives there must be a powerful enchantress because she managed to find a flock of feral felines to share her home. Lets hope she cast a powerful spell on the litter-box....otherwise I shall never set a foot inside this house either.

Think again and then once again if you presume this sickening sojourn to the Horrible Hamlet of Halloween Hallow is over because there are many more abominable abodes to visit yet.
@dimestorefloozie managed to distract and flabbergast me when this unfortunate orange hued house appeared in my mailbox.  (Possibly it belongs to Peter Peter, Pumpkin Eater --- and that could be his wife's eye peering out the window....just wonderin)


Its surrounded by a murder of crows in silhouette yet.  By my count, close to one thousand crows are cawing and crowing and creating a cacophony that reverberates on the rooftops.  And OMG is it possible there is another of those green monster eyes in the upstairs window...Too terrible to imagine what kind of horrifying green slime snake is peering out at me. I imagine its licking its lips and hissing in anticipation of making a snack out of anyone who ventures too close.

I'm hesitant to admit this, but yesterday I was overcome with a dreadful desire to make another house to share with you, for fear it would set off an unholy need to build more and more of them.  When I began digging through my scraps, I unearthed these that really seemed to need to be put together.



Lets begin with the flys surrounding the house.  I loathe flys (but FYI I must admit, I really really love this fabric).  Clearly the upstairs of this house is a fiery portal into the bowels of the earth and everyone knows the sort of creatures reside there.  The pink skull gracing the walls in the attic makes me shudder and shake.  I ask you is  there anything more questionable than a man with a moustache? Well yes,  its a moustache without a man....it makes my hair curl to imagine what happened to the rest of those 3 fellas.  And the finishing touch of terror is that rotten raven roosting in the doorway.

Finally we are getting close to the end of this malevolent madness.  I warn you that you may not be able to stomach the remainder of these residences.  The one you are about to view arrived courtesy of @cedacanthus, all the way from New Zealand.



Let me just say, that there is nothing more frightful and truly terrifying than a house of horrors like this one.  Everything--from the ghastly ghoulish writing in the sky to the bloody front door and the horrifying cross in the upstairs window backlit by poisonous vapours--screams "abandon hope all ye who enter here". You gotta know that if this house was on my block, I would not be stopping by to chat with the resident anytime soon.

Every haunted hamlet has a home that is outstandingly, opulently awful.  This is the one where Halloween Hollow residents go when they want to get REALLY AND TRULY shivery and shaky.  I blame @moonlightsewing because I aged 10 years at least when I opened the envelope this block arrived in.



Its huge, and outside its surrounded by so many more of those terrifying black wee winged beasties falling out of the sky.  Its rooftops are covered with copious amounts of green goblin slime.  If you look in the left wing (LOL) window there is a bespectacled boogey man looking back at you.  And in the right wing of the house, you'll see a dainty pink poltergeist levitating for your amusement.  And finally, finally finally, a ghost is guarding the doorway.  It's  either warning you away or welcoming you inside.  You decide if you are gonna enter.  I know I'm not!

So how was your Halloween? As you can see mine was pretty dang spectacular.  It is my serious hope to have all these blocks sewn together in time for next Halloween.



It has been my very great joy to be part of Stash Beehive 2 this year and I'm looking forward to doing it all again next year with another great bunch of Quilty people in Stash Beehive 4. But....don't think for even one second that I'm going to forget about you guys in Hive 2.  I'll be watching what you post every month on Instagram...and I may even hive crash once or twice.

Did you do something creative today?






Friday, November 30, 2018

Tu-Na Quilts: A Paper Crane for Hive 4

Here's a beautiful pink paper crane for Katy in Hive 4.

This block is 11.5" unfinished. Katy asked for a pink crane and a white or white on white background. Isn't it cute?

You can find Katy's post tutorial here and the paper crane templates here. This block was easy to sew and came together quickly. It took me a couple of hours to complete it. However, it took me all month to pick out the fabric! The print looks like a maze or puzzle. Life is kind of like that at times.

This block will be on it's way to Katy tomorrow along with lots of good wishes and prayers for her mom and for Katy, too.

What I Learned Today:
  1. Teaching a paper piecing class is exhausting. I'm hoping my class members get their homework assignment done in time for class next week.
  2. I love to paper piece!!!
  3. I want to make more origami crane blocks.
  4. I took this block to my paper piecing class today and the class members recognized it as an origami crane. I was impressed!
Question: Have you ever done origami? Years ago, I taught a second grade class how to fold a paper crane that looked very much like the one in the block. It was fun but was definitely a very difficult concept for some of those second graders to grasp; I must have had the patience of a saint!

Thanks for stopping by and do come again.

Karen, Tu-Na Quilts

If you'd like to read more about me or read about my adventures and misadventures in quilting, traveling, and cooking, please visit my blog, Tu-Na Quilts, Travels, and Eats. You're welcome to join my reading family by subscribing to follow me using one of the three ways: Wordpress, Bloglovin, or email found on my sidebar on my blog (if viewing on a mobile phone, just keep on scrolling down).


Crane for Katy

And one more crane block for Katy...I popped it in the mail at the beginning of last week, so hopefully it arrives soon!


Meredith

Thursday, November 29, 2018

Hive 1 Block for Jo


Hi Jo,

Applique is not one of my better techniques.  However after 2 failed attempts I decided that since you said that you would be fine with doing the stitching I would just "get 'er done".

Here is a Christmas stag to add to your quilt.

It will be in the mail for you this evening and I hope that it reaches you without delay (unlike a lot of the mail deliveries that I have been waiting for).  LOL



I have really enjoyed working on all the different blocks and look forward to having some more free time after the holidays to work on my own projects.

Thank you,

Sherry V.

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Hive 1 Blocck for Jo

Jo, here is your block which you need to finish.  Sorry it took so long.  I need to make a New Year’s resolution to quit procrastinating!  Hope your quilt turns out as good as I think it will.

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Final post of 2018 for me in Hive 4

We did it!

This has been a great year in Stash Bee, and I am so lucky to have been able to participate.  It's wonderful to connect with people all over the world through quilting.



What a wonderful way to celebrate and support your mom, Katy!  I look forward to seeing the completed quilt.

All my best to everyone in this holiday season.

Holiday appliqué for Jo


This little guy is unstitched, but on his way!  I rounded all the corners in an effort to make it easy to blanket stitch around.

Merry Christmas!

Friday, November 23, 2018

Angel Block for Katy

Since our hive completed our year, we were asked if any of us could make blocks for Katy.   It's my pleasure to add blocks for her mom's healing quilt.

These are paper pieced and go together quite easily.



I sent these a while ago so I'm sure they have been received.

If I didn't have so many projects going on, I would most certainly make more for myself - someday....

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Hive 4 crane for Katy

I really love the crane, and hope that all the well wishing and love that us encompassed in our blocks will give your mom strength and hope.
And although I enjoy paper piecing, I had to reconfigure several of my fabric pieces. The night I did this , my mojo was off.
But I live how it turned out.

Monday, November 19, 2018

November Hive for Jo


I finally got the pieces together for this month. No, since you offered, I’m gonna let you do the overstitchng. I’ve only done raw edge and I like a “messier” look than I’ve been seeing, so I’ll let you do what you want =)

I’ve had a great returning year. Thanks to everyone in hive one!  You’re all amazing quilters and I’ve loved learning from each of you!  Merry Christmas!!

Friday, November 16, 2018

A Fun Time

From dithering over the pattern and searching for fabric to curling up with the appliqué work during a recent cold spell, I enjoyed every minute of making this block for you, Jo. I will put it in the mail by Monday.


Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Paper Crane Block - Hive 4, November

I love this block - I love paper piecing and I love the story of the paper cranes. I had fun making it. :) I'm sure your mom will love the quilt. This is on the way to you tomorrow morning. I apologize in advance if it takes a long time to get to you, Canada Post is still experiencing strikes.


November block for Jo!

I wasn't expecting an applique block, but it was fun!! I picked a Christmas candle and I hope you like it Jo! Hopefully it'll be in the mail to you by the end of the week.
It was a fun bee this year--thank you all!
Enjoy the holidays everyone!
Liz

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

November block, Hive 4

This was such a fun pink to make the swan from!  I hope that your mom loves the quilt.


Monday, November 12, 2018

Hive 1 November from Kathie for Jo

Jo, I love your Christmas theme.  I have done very little machine embroidery, so I picked a pattern with very few twists, turns and corners.  I hope you enjoy it.
Kathie L in Allentown

A completed top from Hive 1

I'd like to thank my hive mates for the terrific blocks they made for me this year.  The picture shows them all put together.  By next summer it will be on the bed of a camper at Camp Erin, a camp for kids healing from a bereavement.  This will be sure to bring cheer.  Thanks so much.
Kathie L in Allentown, PA

Sunday, November 11, 2018

Jo’s Christmas Fun Block

I confess, I have added appliqué to a couple of quilts, but not using fusing paper, so this was a first for me, but not the last.  I love the art of this process.  This is not perfect, but I am happy with the result just the same.  I hope you are as well.  This is also another great idea for a future quilt.  Thus the danger of being part of a bee with very talented mates.  I enjoyed this year and am sad it’s a wrap so fast.  Enjoy the holidays everyone!

Thursday, November 8, 2018

Hive 4 crane for Katy


Here is a crane toward your project Katy.  Paper foundation piecing is a struggle for me. A couple of my points are not perfect but I hope this still meets with your approval.  It really is a darker pink than it looks. And obviously I don't know how to edit my phone pictures so you don't see so much of my design wall. 😖
This crane will be flying off to you soon.   

Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Holiday Bells for Jo

Jo had such a great idea of letting us pick out a holiday design to appliqué for her but I'll admit, trying to decide was a lot harder than I expected. I finally chose some holiday bells that I hope she likes.  Appliqué isn't something I do very often but it always look nice. I've always preferred using the blanket stitch but I'd never used a contrasting thread before so thanks Jo for giving me the idea to try it!


~ Diana @ Red Delicious Life

Nov block for Jo


Here we are the last month in our great stash bee for the year. I love Jo's idea of the applique blocks, but I have never really done applique. I tried to stitch around some extra scrap fabric with very sad results. So Jo, here are my two Christmas balls on a snowflake back ground. I hope you are able to finish this. I am sorry but I did not want to send you the mess that I would surely make.


Have a wonderful holiday season everyone. See you next year. Happy Sewing, Rose

Monday, November 5, 2018

Stash Bee Hive 4 Finish

Here's to all the wonderful bees in Hive 4.

I requested floating stars back in January.  This is what I did with them.  The sashing is a gray batik and I practiced some simple free motion quilting on it. I injured my shoulder a couple of weeks ago and am only slowly getting back to cutting and sewing.  But I had the binding attached to this quilt  so over the last week I have hand sewn the binding to the back and finished today.
Thank you so much bees.  I love all your colourful stars.  It is my treasure.

Because of my injury I could not get it on my design wall to photograph.  I opened my bedroom windows as much as I could to get these shots as it lay on my bed.


Hive 4 block for Katy



Hi all. Here is Katy’s block for November. I love the story of the thousand paper cranes and read the book in college for children’s literature. Hope you like the happy pink I chose, it makes me smile. 
Happy sewing! So glad we had a great group in our hive this year! 






Pink Cranes for Katy

I love paper piecing.  So I was so excited to get this months block tutorial.  Katy chose Pink Cranes so she can make a quilt for her mom who is fighting a battle with Breast Cancer.  

Hope It all comes together in time for Christmas.  Sending good vibes to your mother as well as this Crane to you!

Happy Holidays to EVERYONE!!!!!

Sunday, November 4, 2018

Hive 7 -

I love sewing.  I don't love blogging.  That's why this post has so many pictures.  I don't think I ever posted these finishes anywhere other than Instagram.  These are the blocks I've sent but may not have posted.

February


March


July

August

September



And finally, the last block of Hive 7 2018 - on its way to a new home!

October


Saturday, November 3, 2018

Stash Bee finish from 2017

Last year was my first time doing any kind of online swap.  I was nervous, so each month, I made a practice block (or two or three) to make sure I got it just right.  I have a LOT of purple scraps, so that's what I used.  As the year wound up and my turn as Queen came around, I hadn't settled on what block I wanted.  I kept staring at my hivemates' blocks on my design wall.


That's when it hit me -- what if everyone made their block for me?  So, here it is.  My 2017 Stash Bee (almost) finish!  Thanks again, everyone from 2017 Hive 2!

flimsy-only on a queen sized bed

quilted, but not yet scalloped & bound