Stash Bee: Hive 10 - August Block Tutorial

What is your name? My name is Lesley Latham. My middle name is Jean, but all of my social media sites say it’s Larry. My roommates from college and I changed our middle names on Facebook to be Curly, Moe, and Larry after the Three Stooges. It’s kind of stuck.

Where do you live? We live in downtown Kansas City, MO, in a fabulous two bedroom condo.

Tell us about your family (Spouse, kids, grandkids, pets, etc.) It’s just my boyfriend of six and half years, Andrew, and me. You can read more about my amazing parents and sister on the About Me page on my blog.

Tell us about how you got interested in quilting. My great-grandmother set me up hand piecing a quilt when I was 15. That was the only quilting I did for a few years and I finished the quilt when I was 21. I really became serious about quilting after college and my mom, also a quilter, helped get me set up with a machine and all of the tools to get started. Additionally, I have a ton of quilters and sewists throughout both sides of my family, so I say that it’s in my blood.

How do you organize your fabric stash? (Picture appreciated) Because our second bedroom of our condo is Andrew’s man cave, I set up my sewing room in our master walk-in closet. One half of the closet is my sewing room and the other half holds our clothing. Obviously, that’s where my blog name, The Closet Quilter, came from.

I have a storage cubby for current projects, yarn, pre-cuts, and bundles. Also, there are floor to ceiling windows for some awesome natural light during the day.

Since I have limited space, I have a pretty small fabric stash. Most of the large cuts of quilting or apparel fabric hang next to our clothes. My scraps are in bins on the top shelf of the closet and then I wrap smaller cuts of fabric on comic book boards and place them on the bottom shelf.

Who is/are your favorite fabric designers? I fell in love with Vanessa Christenson’s (V & Co.) first line for Moda called Simply Color. I also love anything by Joel Dewberry, Rashida Coleman Hale, Jay McCarroll, and Lotta Jansdotter.

What is one thing you have learned that you wish you knew when you first started quilting? I wish I had a better idea about machines and quality. I started sewing on an old Singer that my mom had loaned me. When I looked to buy my own machine, I was fairly new to the hobby/craft and didn’t know if it would stick, so I went with a new Singer. It’s true that they don’t make them like the used to. I’ve since upgraded to a Babylock Symphony, which is AMAZING. I can imagine myself sewing on it for a very very long time.

What is your favorite sewing/quilting tool and why should we all go out and buy it? One of my favorite parts of making a quilt is hand sewing the binding. I actually like all types of hand work such as crocheting, hand quilting, and embroidery. If you hand sew at all, Thread Heaven is a must. It’s basically like beeswax and it makes your thread glide through the fabric so smoothly!

Who is your favorite fictional character and why? (Could be from a book, movie, TV show, etc.) As a kid, I fell in love with Ariel from The Little Mermaid and I will always have a soft spot for her.

I’ve had a thousand favorite fictional characters over the years since my other hobby is reading. Each time that I read a book, one of the characters becomes my favorite. Then I read another book and it changes. However, I read the Millennium series (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, etc.) a few years ago and again in the last year and I absolutely LOVE Lisbeth. So she has stuck as my favorite for awhile now.

Block Tutorial

I’m asking for a Modern maples block. The original tutorial is from Lark Crafts - http://www.larkcrafts.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/modern-maples.pdf.

Fabric

For the background, please use low volume print or low volume solid fabrics. For the maple leaf, use any print that you love. The only color I typically don’t like is brown, but if you have a brown print that you absolutely love, I’m positive that I will love it, too. I'm also not a big fan of novelty fabrics.

Block Size - 12.5” square (unfinished)

Seam Allowance - Always use ¼” seam

Cutting

- (2) 4.5” background squares (Note: You can cut one of these larger if you’d like and trim it down once the stem unit is complete.)

- (2) 5” background squares (Note: You can cut these larger if you’d like and trim them down once the half square triangle units are complete.)

- (3) 4.5” print squares

- (2) 5” print squares (Note: You can cut these larger if you’d like and trim them down once the half square triangle units are complete.)

- (1) 2” x 7” print strip (Note: You can cut this longer than 7” if you’d like and trim it down once the stem unit is complete.)

Instructions

1. Take one 5” print square and one 5” background square and place them right sides together. Draw a line using a water soluble or non-permanent marker along the diagonal.

2. Sew ¼” on each side of the drawn line.

3. Cut along the drawn line to create two half square triangle units.

4. Press and trim each half square triangle unit to 4.5” square.

5. Repeat for the remaining 5” print and background squares.You should have four half square triangle units.

6. Take one 4.5” background square and cut along the diagonal to create two triangles.

7. Place one triangle right sides together along the long edge of the 2” x 7” print strip. Sew along the long edge.