Hive 2, 2015, May

I loved making these blocks for Sue. I love plus signs, tic tac toe, crosses, wonky crosses, wonky tic tac toe, wonky plus signs. I love the geometric straight lines, but am so relieved to see there is always a little margin for error, sorry creativity.

Sue asked for a low volume centre, and she loves texty fabrics. I have some typed fabric I bought for a book square swap and also some text fabric for the Summersville Spring range, which I'm actually going to use in a giant plus quilt.

The square was made loosely following the log cabin principle, but not, if you know what I mean. We sewed narrow strips of differing widths around the four sides of the central square. The four fabrics were to be from the same colour family. Then the square was cut in four roughly. NOT roughly cut, just estimated quarters. They were then sewn back together with the stripes in the centre.

This will be gorgeous when the squares all come together. Sue is happy to trim them herself. She had asked for four of these squares, which combined would make 16" squares. But by trimming and sewing together herself she can keep the variety. 

I really enjoyed making these and was more than happy to make 2 sets. When it comes to difficult points, I won't love the bee queen any less, but will probably only do the one required square! In fact I was enjoying it so much, and fretting about each square making 8.5" I didn't notice two were sewn wrong in the second set. The red and the peach have one square wrong. I was worrying about the peach being from the same range and not enough and took my eye off the ball. Last week I finished a quilt top I called Cant See The Wood For The Trees, Can't See The Trees For The Leaves and this is a case in point.  Don't worry though Sue, I will correct it before I post them. Luckily our queen been Caroline had her eye on things, and spotted on instagram.

Sue asks where I find inspiration. Like Yannick I find inspiration when I'm out and about. I love tiled floors, flower beds, fencing. I look and I say, that would be make a wonderful quilt.