Hive 1, January, Piano Keys Block for Leah

 

Quick block, great for scrap strips. 

Photo colors are off.

Will drop in the mail next week!

-Tasha

Hive 1, January, Piano Keys Block for Leah

Hi Leah,

These Blocks came together very quickly and are a great scrap booster!

Thank you for the lovely start to the Bee.

They went into the post yesterday.

Take care and happy quilting,

Rita

 

Hive 6 January Tutorial: Spinning Stars for Josie

 Happy new year!  I am starting off the year right with a block I made for our Hivemate Kieran's month last year. Kieran gave us the option to make any star in a certain color palette, and this is one of the stars I chose and ADORED.  It is the Spinning Star block designed by Lissa Alexander and featured in Moda's Blockheads 5.  For color, you have free rein, just keep it tone-on-tone.  Here are a few examples from my pull, and I'll be working mine in purples:

Start with cutting the following:

• Color A: two strips 1 3/4" x 22"
• Color B: two strips 1 3/4" x 22"
• Color C: four 3 3/8" squares, cut in half diagonally, and four 4 3/8" squares, also cut in half diagonally

Take your strips and sew them together along the long edges.  Press to your preference.  

Trim the left edge of your strip at a 45 degree angle.  This will set the angle for the rest of your cuts. 

Once you have that edge set, put the three inch line of your ruler on that edge and cut a diamond shaped section.  

Repeat for the rest of this strip and do the same thing on your other strip.  You should wind up with eight total diamond shaped pieces.

Next, we are going to make FOUR left side units.  Take four diamonds and four of your smaller triangle units, and with your diamonds' stripe running horizontally, sew the triangle to the left hand side.  (You can check your alignment by making sure the dog ear extends by 1/4" beyond the diamond's edge.)  Press to your preference.

Then we will add the larger triangle to the top of this to complete the triangle.  Align the triangle at the top, sew, and press to your preference.

Next we will make our right side sections! Take your remaining four diamonds and four smaller diamonds, and this time, we're going to attach the smaller triangle to top of whichever color was on top in the left side units. These units will spiral together, so the color direction matters!

Finally, we will triangle up these units and add the larger triangle to the seamed edge.

Now we're going to start seeing stars! Take a right and a left unit and sew them together along the long edge to make a square.

Next, keep joining your blocks: 

Finally, join your two halves, and you have a spinning star block! 

This test block was a little wonky, but I used this example so you could see how forgiving the block can be.  The alignment can be a little janky but the overall effect is going to be all about color, so don't let it stress you.  Thank you all for kicking off the new year right with a quilting project!

 

Hive 5 January Tutorial: Haphazard blocks for Laura

 Happy New Year!  I’m so excited for another Stash Bee year!

My word for 2025 (yes, I’m one of those) is FINISH.  I think I have an addiction to starting projects….I’m just not very good at finishing them!  LOL. After suffering a BIG move in 2024, I realized I have way too much stuff and way too many WIPS.  So, I decided to have my Stash Bee mates help to finish one of the quilts I started.

This month we will be completing a HAPHAZARD BLOCK inspired by MY POPPY.  You can view her version and tutorial HERE . I altered the dimensions of her block to create a 12” block.

This is super easy and super fun!  Enjoy the process &

I can’t wait to see your blocks!

Fabric:  Let’s keep this light & bright! Any color is fine with the exception of super dark colors, red, brown, grey and black.  Here’s some color inspiration (but no brown).

So let’s go:

Cut (1) 7.5” square from low volume/white fabric.

Pick a juicy color and cut (4) 3” strips from 4 different fabrics in that color line.  I cut all my strips at about 13” to make it easier, but you can get away with making three of the strips a little shorter.

Sew the strips around the center square using a 1/4” seam.

I squared my block off after each strip was added.

The block should measure around 12.5”.  Press.

Now comes the fun part!  Cut the block in half twice (6 1/4”)

Now turn each piece so that the center square is in the corner.

Sew the 4 pieces together.

The block should measure 12”.

Please don’t worry if it’s a little wonky - I’m okay with that!

I love the scrappy cross that this creates!

Please let me know if you have any questions and

 just have fun with this!

Peace, Laura

 

HIve 2 January Tutorial: American Homes block for Gayle

 

  

Hello, Happy New Year! My first year being in StashBee was 2016 and I have been participating ever since. It has been fun!  

I saw a quilt made from this block, called American Homes, that I found in two encyclopedia books of quilt blocks. It is fairly simple and quick to make.

You will need four different fabrics:

Background - I would like solid, light pale pastel in any color. If you don't have that, you can use a cream color, but avoid white. All pieces from same fabric.

Roof and house pieces - colorful fabrics, think clear and sherbet colors. Prints are good as long as they read mostly as one color. Avoid multiple color fabrics.

Roof - all 3 from same fabric

House - from another color, two different prints from the same color family.

 

Cut Backgrounds-   1 - 4 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches

                                1 - 4 1/2 by 4 1/2 inches

                                6 - 2 1/2 squares - marked on the diagonal  

 

Cut Roof sections - 3 - 4 1/2 inch squares - all from same fabric

 

 

Cut House sections - from two different fabrics in the same color family that will contrast with the roof

 1 - 4 1/2 inch square

 1 - 4 1/2 by 8 1/2 inch rectangle 

Sew a 2 1/2 background square to one upper corner of a 4 1/2 roof piece for a sew and flip. Hint: I find if you sew just slightly to the one side of the drawn line, closer the the upper corner, it won't come up short when you flip it back.

Then flip and iron the triangle towards the corner. Trim off the bottom two pieces.

Repeat for the other upper corner.

You will now have 3 roof sections.

Sew the two house pieces to two of the roof sections. Iron away from the roof sections.

Then sew the two backgrounds to the left roof and middle house. Iron away from the roof sections here, it will help nest those couple seams when sewing each section.

Line up the sections with the tallest house on the right. Sew remaining seams to complete block. You will end up with a 12 1/2 inch square (will finish at 12 inch).

Thanks - Gayle

Hive 1 January Tutorial: Piano Keys for Leah

 Happy New Year, Hive 1!

Last summer, my hive was kind enough to bear with me with what I'm sure many of them thought was a little crazy. I'm in love with the blocks I received, craziness and all, and have been fiddling with them ever since. I've sewn a few of them together, added some extra bits, and rearranged over and over. Puzzling a quilt together might be my favorite part of quilting. To help me along with this puzzle, I'm asking you now for a Piano Keys block to fill in gaps, both color-wise and space-wise. Hopefully this will be a pretty easy one to start off the year with.

Size: I'm asking for your work in a rectangle of 8" by 16", as I plan on using it a bit like sashing. Please note I made two blocks for this tutorial. You only need to make one.

Here you can see the blocks you'll be helping me supplement. 

Fabric selection can be as varied as you like, I just ask that you avoid holiday/religious prints. Novelty prints that you think a little kid would like are fine; I'm making this quilt for my youngest daughter! I want each of the blocks to be comprised mainly of two adjacent colors of the rainbow or on the color wheel. Blue with green for instance, or purple with red. Other colors are allowed in small amounts (see the butterfly wing print in my photos, which I classified as a purple but underestimated the greens that would show up), but the mains should be the two you choose. Please choose a minimum of four fabrics so that they can be arranged to look random rather than alternating.

My example blocks in the photos are green with blue and blue/indigo with purple. Here's my fabric pull, which I decided to split into two blocks when I realized it spanned a bit further than just two colors. This photo shows thirteen fabrics. You don't need that many!

Cutting: This is flexible. You'll need to cut enough 8.5" strips to sew together into a 16" long rectangle. (I suggest 8.5" to give a little wiggle room to trim down to 8" at the end. Things are bound to get wonky somewhere in there.) I used 13-15 strips per block but your numbers can vary. Strips should be between 1" and 3" wide.

The little checkers will disappear after this photo because here is where I found out I'd cut the checked strips about an inch too short. Whoops! Not my favorite anyway.

Layout: Arrange your strips until you're happy. I just went for something pleasing that avoids the same fabric repeating too close to itself.

Assembly: I piled each of my blocks' strips up in order before bringing them to the sewing machine. Chain piecing is quick and easy: just sew the first two strips together, then the next, etc., until the pile is gone, repeat with sewing the first pair to the second, and on and on. 

Of course the eagle-eyed among you might notice that I've completely lost my original arrangement in this process. You can learn from my mistakes by photographing your layout and referring back as you go, by pinning everything in order, or by going more slowly and carefully than I did. Or just wing it.

Then press, trim to 8" by 16", and you're done!

I can't wait to see your creations! And when you post, please let me know if you have any amazing wisdom on stash storage. Because I suspect there's better out there than bins that morph into piles.

Hive 4 January Tutorial: Perfect Pink Flying Geese for Debbie

Happy New Year!  I'm starting out our 2025 Bee with something pretty easy and straight forward and I hope you all have fun with it. 

2 finished 6.5x12.5 strips

For my block, I would like you to make 2 strips of 4 flying geese.  Each flying goose (geese?) will be 3.5x6.5 unfinished.  All 4 should match.  Each strip should be different fabrics but you can make both of them identical if you want to!  I prefer the geese all be flying in the same direction but we know sometimes they don't so an occasional strip with a different layout is fun.  Please do NOT sew the 2 strips together-this will give me more flexibility in the final placement.  Each strip should measure 6.5 x 12.5.

Fabric Choices

Below are photos of some great choices of fabrics for this block.  Pink.  Lots of pink.  Stick to any shade of pink, with occasional white, red or maroon.  I really want mostly pink.  Solid or print.  If you choose a print, stay within the warm family as much as possible.  Pink, red, a little yellow or orange.  Whites with colored prints should follow the same guidelines - the colors should be pink or red with limited yellow or orange.  Leaves and stems are green and that's fine but the overall colors should read pink or red or maroon.  In making these, I have found really busy prints don't work very well for the look I want.  

Construction

There are lots of ways to make flying geese.  For this particular block, the 4-at-a-time method works perfectly!  This is the tutorial I like to use.  She has done all the math!  There are many sizes listed - use the line for the unfinished block size 3.5 x 6.5.  You will see choices based on experience level.  This will determine the amount of extra fabric you'll trim off.  Use the one that works for you.  Just beware of the beginner level - there is a lot of overlap and there will be a couple blocks that show the raw edge and picking that out is a a pain.  Alternatively, you can go with a one-at-a-time method.  Just make sure at least 4 are identical.  And make sure the unfinished block is 3.5 x 6.5. Here is a good tutorial for the flip and stitch flying geese that finish at 3 x 6 (3.5 x 6.5 unfinished).

I love this Creative Grids ruler to accurately trim my Flying Geese.  I am always amazed how much I use it.  Make sure to leave the 1/4 inch allowance from the tip of the triangle to the top of the block so you don't lose your point in the seam.

Here is the layout I am working on - nothing is sewn together and some blocks are 

longer than 4.  This isn't the finished layout at all and I'll be making a lot of these 

to fill out the quilt. 

Flying geese are a pretty basic block used in a ton of quilting but, if you are new and this is overwhelming, message me on IG and I will get you thru it!  It's a good skill to have!  

Thank you for helping me make my Perfect Pink Flying Geese!  

Debbie