Hive 5 - January tutorial

What is your name?
My name is Sue Bone (Flickr: libertyjsy)

Where do you live?

I live on the little island of Jersey off the north west coast of France. On a clear day you can see the cars driving along the roads in France.

 

Tell us about your family (Spouse, kids, grandkids, pets, etc.)

All of my family live in Jersey. I have been married for twenty years to my accountant husband, Nick and we have two children - Lizzie, 15 and Matt, 18. My parents, brother and sister live relatively close by. On an island which measures nine miles by 5 miles, nowhere is really very far.

Tell us about how you got interested in quilting.

I first became interested in quilting as a teenager, when browsing a copy of my mother's part work magazine "Golden Hands" and I made quite a few hexagon projects. I still have my first quilt and in 2013 returned to hexagons anew.

 

Fast forward to 1995 and I was ill and took up patchwork to keep myself occupied and started making a quilt for my son's nursery. I then taught patchwork for ten years at our adult education centre and plan to start regular classes again in 2014. I added a long arm to my repertoire of equipment two years ago.

 

How do you organize your fabric stash? (Picture appreciated)

I am very disorganised and that is another plan for 2014. My modern fabrics are in one basket sorted by colour and some are retained by collection (Zen Chic and Simply Style), I also have another basket full of Bonnie & Camille fabrics from a number of collections.
 

 

Who is/are your favourite fabric designers?

I love Bonnie & Camille's designs and want to expand my collection of Aneela Hoey ( I totally missed Cherry Christmas) and Lori Holt.

 

What is one thing you have learned that you wish you knew when you first started quilting?

That my taste in fabrics would change and not to overbuy.

 

What is your favourite sewing/quilting tool and why should we all go out and buy it?

At the moment I'm loving my alphabet pins which I made for myself from a pack of pins, alphabet beads and diamond glaze glue. I also use the design boards made using Lori Holt's tutorial for projects with lots of scrappy blocks.

 

 

Who is your favourite fictional character and why? (Could be from a book, movie, TV show, etc.)

I love Bridget Jones - perhaps because we have a similar taste in underwear.

 

Now to my block tutorial for the Japanese X and O block.

 

 

I have chosen the following sampling of fabrics to give you an idea of the sort of fabrics I have in mind. You'll see that I am following the trend for text prints but think that some of the bigger prints wouldn't work for this block.

  

Cutting instructions:

Background: white with small black print 

Eight 2.5" squares

Cross: black prints

One 2.5" by 6.5" rectangle

Two 2.5" squares

Cross ends: turquoise print

Four 2.5" squares

 

Accent lozenges: warm prints - red, deep pink, yellow, orange

Four 4.5" squares
 

 

The lozenges can be all one colour (e.g. red) or a mixture of warm coloured fabrics.

 

 

Start by drawing a diagonal line from point to point on all of the background squares. Lay two on opposite sides of a lozenge square and stitch one thread width towards the corner of the square, along the drawn line. I like my text prints all going the same way so pinned my squares down and then kept flipping the edges back to check they were going in the right direction.

 

 

Press the background squares away from the centre of the lozenge, matching the background corner to the corner of the larger square. Trim the two extra layers from the back of the block. Repeat for all four lozenges.

 

Take your black and turquoise prints and sew:

A turquoise square to both ends of the black rectangle

A turquoise square to a black square - twice

Press seams open

 

 

 

Then you're ready to piece your block together. Sew a lozenge unit to either side of a black / turquoise unit, pressing seams open and then sew two of these units either side of the remaining unit which is the black rectangle with turquoise squares.
 

 

Please make me one block which will measure 10.5" square. You may make more than one block if you wish. I look forward to seeing your fabric choices and getting to know you better over 2014.