Hive 5 Tutorial for January

Welcome to the 2017 bee!

I am honored to serve as your Hive mama this year, my third in the bee and second as mama.

My name is Katie, and I live in Bloomfield, CT with my fabulous kitty cat, Mietz.  I work at a university in the area as an academic support person, and am also heavily involved in my church.  I have two degrees in music (main instrument is flute) and really enjoy getting my hands dirty in house improvement projects.

I bought my first house in May (a fixer upper) and have been working on it consistently since then.  I have one bedroom dedicated to all my crafty endeavors, which makes life wonderful!

To explain my two truths and one line, the lie is that I grew up with a menagerie of animals.  In fact, my mom is very allergic to animals, so we only had a dog growing up, a golden retriever for which she thankfully developed a tolerance.  I did close on my house while standing in line to fly out of the country (talk about stress!) and I played a nun in The Sound of Music in a local theatre production.

For my block choice this month, I am going with an easy block introduced to me last year.  It is called Checker and is just lovely!

Colors:

This picture represents my color inspiration:

I'm looking for bright, saturated yellows which stay away from orange if possible.  The most important thing to remember when choosing colors is to make the dark and light of yellow and gray pieces far enough apart in value to make a difference.

Tutorial:

Begin with your four colors (or more, if you want to raid your scrap bin! Only the dark grey strips need to be the same fabric) and cut according to the following instructions (one of each piece):

To create the half square triangles, place the like-sized yellow squares together, right sides facing, draw a diagonal line through one, then sew ¼" on either side of the line.  Once complete, cut along the drawn line and you will have two pieces!  Press open your triangles and trim to 4.5" and 7" squares.  (You will only need one of each set for the block; include the other half squares in your mail to me and I will use them to make other blocks OR make a second block, your choice!).

Finally, join the pieces as indicated below:

Pretty simple, right?  This is a wonderful block to test your ¼" seam allowance - you will be able to tell whether you got it right when you match up the bottom and top pieces!

(This tutorial can also be found at the Blossom Hearts blog.  I have taken the picture instructions from this one page tutorial from Quilting Rainbows: one-page PDF.)

I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with!  Good wishes in the New Year!

Katie