Hive 12 April Tutorial

Hello all!  I'm Michele and I'm from Indiana.  My little family includes my husband Terry and one very spoiled Yorkshire Terrier, Cooper.  For many years I was a children's librarian, but I decided a few years ago that I needed a career change and I am now a psychiatric nurse.  I work nights, so often when I'm off work, I quilt into the wee hours of the morning.

Tell us about how you got interested in quilting.
My grandmother is the ultimate crafter and I spent most of the weekends of my childhood with her at her camper on a lake.  She taught me the basics of sewing and, most importantly, how much fun it is to try something new.  While we never quilted, I certainly count her as my inspiration for starting my quilting journey.  My mother-in-law is responsible for the quilting part of my creativity.  She is the ultimate shopper and she bought me a quilt kit one day out of the blue.  The fabrics weren't ones that I really liked, but I loved the idea of putting it all those different fabrics together and I've been practicing my craft ever since.  (And it's been more than 16 years and I still haven't sewn that kit!) 

How do you organize your fabric stash?
I don't have a large stash, but what I do have is organized mainly by color and/or size.  As you can see, the top shelf of fabric is yardage and the next one is fat quarters.  My biggest accomplishment is that I now have all of my scraps sorted by color!

Who is/are your favorite fabric designers?
Tula Pink, Tula Pink and probably Tula Pink.  If you look closely at my stash photo you can see that I have all of Acacia and Saltwater in there.  There's also some Prince Charming and some Neptune squirreled away.  I love how her lines can be used with each other.  Recently, I have been adoring fabrics from Bonnie and Camille and am working on a sampler quilt using their April Showers line. 

What is one thing you have learned that you wish you knew when you first started quilting?
If someone had told me what a scant quarter inch was and how important it can be, I would have cussed a lot less!

What is your favorite sewing/quilting tool and why should we all go out and buy it?
Hmm...I don't know that I have one tool in particular that I love.  My rule is that if a tool is made in the color pink, then it must be the best and I must have it.

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

Oh goodness.  As a former librarian, this is really, really difficult.  For today, it would probably be Einstein from Dean Koontz's book Watchers.  Einstein is a Golden Retriever who has the ability to read.  Because of his gift, he has to learn how to be both kind of a dog and kind of a human.  Maybe I like him because I wish more people could be as awesome as dogs in their kindness. 

And now for the good stuff:

I dreaded choosing my block.  I hemmed and hawed for ages. I've been hoarding this fabric for ages and I knew that I wanted to use it and that I wanted curves to mimic the bubbles. This will be my sashing and border fabric.

But here's the catch - I'm terrified of curves and I would NEVER subject others to something I wasn't willing to do myself.  So, I decided to fake the curves.  Enter the Dresden Plate!  I searched long and hard for a tutorial that didn't require a special ruler and I found a fantastic one that uses just 6 charm squares and a regular quilting ruler.  The video is here. 

For colors, I am looking for bright jewel tones that will complement that bubble fabric.  If you have dotted fabric in those tones, please add them in!  I would like the background to be a solid, bright color.  No whites or greys, please.  I want this quilt to be be scrappy and overwhelmingly bright.  My sample block will be in the quilt, so you can see I didn't get all matchy-matchy with the colors.

I had to watch the video a few times to get it, but once I did, I was off and sewing like mad.  Here are a few pointers:

-In the video, its a little confusing about what she means when she says to cut the wedge at 3/4 inch.  You are actually cutting off 1 1/4 inch from the lower right hand side.  If you do it the way she does, your ruler is 3/4 of an inch to the right of that second inch mark on the cutting mat.  This took FOREVER to get my mind around, so I cheated.  I just ended up measuring 1 1/4 inch from the right hand side at the bottom, marked it with a pen and lined that mark up with the top right corner and made my cut.

-When I put all the wedges together, I did them in groups of 3 for a total of 4 pie pieces.  When you sew those last four pieces together, end your seam at a little more than a quarter of an inch from the bottom. This will leave the middle of the plate open and it will be easier to iron flat.

-My back ground is a solid 12 inch square.  I centered the plate on the square by folding the background in half by length and width and finger pressing.  I did the same with the plate and placed it in the middle of the solid square.  I didn't do any fancy applique when I put the plate on the background, I just sewed about 1/8th inch inside.  You can see this on my finished block.

-The center circle on the plate was just made by tracing around an old spool for the circle shape.  Again, it is just sewn on as a raw edge.  Any sized circle you can find is fine as long as it covers the middle of the plate.

 So, there we are!  I hope that the block is easy and fun to make - once I figured out the cutting, I was surprised about how easy it was.  I can't wait to see what you all come up with! Happy quilting! -Michele