Hive 8 April Block Tutorial

My name is Melissa, my family calls me Missy, and the kids call me mom, except my oldest who is obsessed with all things British, she calls me Mum.

Where do you live?

I live in the awesome city of Oklahoma City, home of the OKC Thunder!  We have had an awfully long and hard winter and spring is finally showing her face around here.  April and May are the exciting weather months here with too many tornadoes going on at one time to count!  Last year was awful and we are praying that this year is more on the calm side.  Here is a picture (thanks to travelok.com) of our downtown with an awesome Oklahoma sunset.  I promise there is more to Oklahoma than fields of hay and country songs.

Tell us about your family.

I've been with my awesome husband since I was sixteen.  We dated for five years, then married.  We have three kids, two of them in the fantastic teenage years, and the youngest is eleven.

This is me and my husband. 

Here are the munchkins.

Each picture totally explains my kids, there are no words necessary.  I have some awesome dogs too.  If you follow me on Instagram (melissa_laine) I'm sure you've seen them.

Tell us how you got interested in quilting.

My husband and I had breakfast together one Saturday morning in 2009 and we decided to walk and look at shops in the center after we ate.  I walked into a LQS and saw TONS of awesome fabric, I couldn't believe it.  It was so much better then the big box fabric stores!  I took Home Ec. in middle school, so I had some basic sewing skills.  I googled free sewing patterns, and well, here I am five years later.

How do you organize your fabric stash?

Umm...yeah, that is embarrassing.  I'll show it anyway.

                               

Who is/are your favorite fabric designers?

Vanessa Christenson of V & Co. and Camille Roskelley of Simplify are the BEST!

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

So, don't laugh.  That rubber end on the seam ripper.  I just figured out two months ago that it is there so you can drag it across and pull out tiny threads after you have taken out a seam.

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

I love to use Crayola Washable Markers to mark my quilt tops before I quilt them.  Even black!  They wash right out.

Who is your favorite fictional character and why?

I would so love to be Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham.  That lady is badass!  She says exactly what she is thinking in her head and they let her!!

Okay, so time to get down to business.  I chose the Scrappy Trip Around the World block for my turn.  Everyone was so crazy about them and I never got around to making one, that is where you ladies all come in!  I would like some color!  Please no browns or blacks, and not a lot of white or cream if you can help it.  Gray is okay.  Please no batiks.  Anything else goes!  I used the tutorial from Quiltville.

First, gather six 2.5 inch strips.  They will need to be 16 inches long to make one block.  If you use a jelly roll strip, you can get two blocks.

Sew each strip together lengthwise and iron seams open.

Next sew the two long sides together, it will look like a tube.  Then iron that seam open.

Cut off the end to make a nice, clean line.

Next, you will cut 2.5 inch strips.  They will look like little tubes because all the seams are sewn together.

 I don't have a picture for this next part.  Now you will remove a seam on each 'tube'.  You have to lay them out flat after each one you remove so that you can figure out which one to do next.  The goal here is to make sure each fabric begins one of the strips.

Here they are all laid out.

Now sew each row together, matching the seams.  Press seams open again.

 Tada!  All finished!