After The Fat Quarterly Retreat Quiltova and I decided to set up our own bee for Ex-pats and Europeans. And so, Sew Euro-bee-an was formed.

I’m on duty for the first month and I’ve been pondering lots of possibilities over the last couple of weeks. I found a block I liked, but the publishers of the book that contains the block wouldn’t give me permission to use it, so finally I decided to go it on my own. I’ve had such a lot of fun. Somehow designing something always seemed a bit scary, but I took my time and had a few aha moments along the way and before I knew it I had two blocks made and more to the point I like them and I hope the other bee ladies will too!

My theme for this month is Sea Glass….those lovely smoothed pieces of glass in soft colours that you can pick up on beaches all over the world.

I’m going for a modern improvised approach – based on 1 or 1.5 inch blocks within a nine patch with other pieces in this size range sashed in randomly. I’ve used Kona Snow as the background fabric and some Kona Solids in the Poseidon range  for the outer borders. My idea is that the borders should vary in width. I think batiks work really well here, but large scale or colourful prints don’t, solids and subtle patterns are good too.

I can’t wait to see what the lovely Sew Euro-bee-an ladies produce!

You might want to check out their blogs!

Di – www.quiltova.blogspot.com – (Czech Republic, but Di is a Brit like me!)

Betty – www.bettyvanos.blogspot.com (Netherlands)

Christine – www.grapes-hearts.blogspot.com (Germany)

Pippa – www.pippaspatch.com (France, another Brit!)

Elisabeth – www.sharksdinner.com (A Swissie in the UK)

Tacha – www.haniesquilts.blogspot.com (A Brit in Germany)

Floh – www.flohstiche.blogspot.com (Germany)

Nicole – www.followthewhitebunny.com (Netherlands)

Celine – www.espritpatch.com (French in the UK)

Lush – www.diegoagogo.com (An Aussie in the UK)

Annabella – www.kechquilts.blogspot.com (A Brit in Morocco)

and last but not least, Linda in the Netherlands.

Now I’m off to the Post Office with all my little bundles….sew exciting!!

Helen

…..what I’ve been doing for the last two days.

I wanted to be quilting Lime Fizz or Zigzag, or even getting as far as basting them, or making Katy’s block for Stitch Tease, or sending out the packages for the Sew Euro-bee-an bee….

Have I even touched any of these?

NO I HAVE NOT!

For the last two days I have been sewing Little Red Riding Hood capes in horrible shiny, slippery fabric. Yes you’ve guessed it. The ballet teacher got me, or rather she got my daughter and now I have a stack of capes to make. As my daughter is about to turn 18 and she’s been doing ballet since she was 4, I have been here before as you can imagine. In the past I have made lamb costumes, witch costumes, jumping jack costumes, spent 4 months sewing sequins on fish head costumes, been stage manager and done a whole lot of other stuff that I have tried hard to forget and put behind me. Now I’m spending beautiful sunny days sewing red,slippery capes.

When I tell you that these will be worn for 5 minutes or so for all of two performances, you can see my frustration.

This is the end though. When these are done, that’s it! FOREVER!!!!

It’s such a waste of time and effort though….

On a happy note I shall leave you with a photo of my agapanthus blossoms. Possibly my very favourite flower and I grew these from bulbs and it’s the first year they have flowered. They bring back lots of happy memories of the years I lived in California. There they are decidedly two a’ penny, here they’re a little more special!

Helen

Have you noticed that suddenly English paper piecing has become the new hot thing in the quilting world? Suddenly hexies are all over blogland, being happily stitched during car journeys, bus rides or at home in front of the television. Everybody is at it!

Having met Tacha Bruecher at the FQ Retreat this year and now having her in our new bee, Sew Euro-bee-an, I had to get my hands on her new book – and over the last week in breaks from everything else that’s going on, I’ve been sitting in the sunshine and perusing it.

Hexa go-go fits right into what is going on in the quilting world. It’s all about hexagons, but boy does Tacha show you that there is more to hexagons than just the tried and tested Grandmother’s Flower Garden! It’s certainly a very modern take on an age-old technique and fits right in with the whole slow movement ideas that are catching on everywhere. As Tacha quite rightly says: “Hexagons are wonderfully portable – quilting’s answer to knitting”. They are also excellent for using up small scraps!

The book is well written, with very clear instructions which would be perfect for beginners and the photography is great, and has a bit of a hippy, ethno-chic look to it.

My favourite pieces in the book were the modern take on Grandmother’s Flower Garden, the Snowflakes patterns and the Giant Star Pillow. I really hope that we’ll see a volume two of this, branching out into other shapes, because from what I can see, there’s a big gap in the market in that area!

Great job Tacha!!

Helen

So. The kids are home and my quiet 3 1/2 days are over. I absolutely loved them. Loved, loved, loved!

For once I managed to have time for me when I really needed time for me and I wallowed in it. I got a fair bit done – two quilt tops finished and the block for EEEEP EPP BEE designed (yay!) and two blocks made up and a sock and a half knitted. I also cleaned the house, edited two papers, did some, but not enough, stuff in the garden, defrosted the freezer and cleaned the AGA, got the laundry situation under control and watched lots and lots of Olympics. It was brill!

I also had time to be quiet and reflect on things that have happened recently, time to remember my friend, time to cry some and time to just be. And it was good.

I didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped, but then faced with a few days we always expect more than we can deliver, don’t we? I think I also somehow had a week in my head, when in reality I only had half of one.

I’ve learned several things this week…

1. I really love it when my house is clean and tidy. It lifts my spirits and I should make more of an effort on a regular basis. Mind you, it makes a big difference when I clean up and it stays cleaned up. My family are a wretchedly untidy lot (I blame their father!).

2. I can actually do this designing stuff. I spent a lot of time pondering what to make for the Sew Euro-bee-an bee which also has to go out this month. I contacted publishers about copyright on patterns (no reply) and then realized that all my thinking had actually given me some really cool ideas – so watch out! The next blocks are already on the drawing board. It’s also really fulfilling to come up with my own ideas rather than just copying something out of a book….but more about that next week.

3. It’s OK to cut all the nicest flowers in the garden and just enjoy them in the house all by myself.

4. I’m very lucky in that I love being at home. I’m never bored and I’m never lonely and I actually think that that’s a very big gift. The whole quilting world out there means that I’m always busy, stimulated and challenged and learning new things.

5. A few days home alone is one of the best vacations a girl can have. And it doesn’t cost anything. Staycations are COOL!

That’s it. I’ll shut up now!

Enjoy your Saturday and cross your fingers and toes for Jess and Mo in the Athletics today!

Helen

Yesterday was my day for getting my September block for the EEEEP EPP BEE designed and a prototype made.

I’m a bit of a newbie to English Paper Piecing – except for the hexagon quilt I made as a teenager, I’ve done precisely nothing except for the Treasure Chest blocks that I made for the bee last month. But how hard can it be? I printed out graph paper, sharpened my pencil, found my ruler, which was lurking in the bottom of my sewing box and set to.

Designing something went pretty well and after a little bit of faffing around with colour pencils and getting the colour placement sorted I got down to the nitty gritty of looking for scraps. My scrap basket is rather like Mary Poppins’ handbag – and even I was shocked at how much there was in there (I definitely feel another scrappy rug project coming on!).

Very soon I had this….

and then this…

and then the trouble began. You see it didn’t cross my mind when I was playing with my graph paper that I maybe needed to worry about points. Now I think maybe I shouldn’t have been so gung ho. There are an awful lot of fiddly points and angles meeting in this and I had no idea that it was so difficult to get really nice crisp centres with EPP.

It was very frustrating…very, very frustrating….

So I gave up for a bit and went and defrosted the freezer. If you have any idea how much I utterly detest doing this, then you might have a glimpse of what sort of a state I was in.

Then I did a bit more, and it didn’t really go much better…

So I cleaned the AGA – another detested job….

And then finally got my prototype finished…

From a distance it’s now passable, but I can say hand on heart that the points would have been way, way better if I’d made this on the machine. I think I must be doing something wrong on the points, so today I’m going to have another go on the second block.

However – I like my pattern and I think it will be really nice when I can put several blocks together – the sides will either produce cream or coloured squares which I can play around with to make secondary patterns. I do just wonder of everyone in the whole bee will hate me for ever more for all the acute angles they’ll have to deal with.

There’s way more to this EPP malarky than meets the eye I can tell you!!

Helen