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![]() August is my month to be queen of Hive 3 at Stash Bee. I've been gathering ideas for a long while, planning for something quick and scrappy in a rainbow palette, but my husband made an eleventh hour request (yesterday afternoon) to minimize the number of colors, and to include his favorites (red and blue). Considering we're a military family, and he and I both liked this block designed with white contrast stripes, I decided to go all out American. I've asked my hive mates to use a scrappy mix of bright, medium/cooler red and blue prints along with solid white or low volume white to create incomplete 12.5" blocks from HSTs. Below is a shot of the fabric pull I shared for inspiration, and I also whipped together a quick Pinterest board with more examples. While looking for HST tutorials online to refer to, I found two excellent examples that show how to best square off your blocks as you go. The first HST tutorial from Karen at Sew Many Ways includes trimming with a square ruler, and the second HST tutorial from Amy Smart at Diary of a Quilter (who is vacationing in Germany at the moment - lucky her!) includes trimming with a right square triangle ruler made for that specific purpose. Both tutorials are for creating two-at-a-time HSTs, which is perfect for saving a little time while still allowing a lot of variety in fabrics so the blocks stay very scrappy.
If you'd like to create something similar, here's a quick how to for the blocks... For each 12" finished block, you'll need: (8) 4" squares of saturated color fabrics & (8) 4" squares of white/low volume Begin by pairing (8) sets of 4" squares together matching saturated with white/LV following the two-at-a-time HST method to create (16) 3.5" squares. Then sew resulting (16) 3.5" squares together to create (4) 6.5" squares similar to the dark/light pattern example below. I asked my bee mates to stop here because I want to mix their smaller block segments in with mine and get as scrappy a look as possible before assembling. If you're working on them for yourself, you'll sew together the (4) 6.5" squares to get (1) 12.5" unfinished/12" finished block. I love that with these blocks, you can play around with layouts to create simple diagonal stripes from corner to corner, or "arrows" >> pointing in one direction or in opposing rows, or create a focal diamond and work out from it. Tons of design possibilities! Are you in a bee? What block have you chosen or really loved creating for a bee mate?
~ Sarah Linking up with Fabric Frenzy Friday 8/2/2014 03:34:35
I really like how many ways there are to assemble these blocks. I look forward to seeing what your bee mates make for you and how you get them all assembled!
Kathy @ Kwilty Pleasures
8/2/2014 09:05:22
Great tute! 8/4/2014 14:41:10
I'm just in one bee at the moment (my other one finished up). For my block, I chose Converging Corners (tutorial - http://filminthefridge.com/2012/02/23/converging-corners-block-a-tutorial/) in reds and aquas. The blocks are rolling in now and I love how they look! 8/5/2014 05:12:03
These are amazing, just love red, white, and blue! With scrappy colors this is going to be amazing :). I just joined a round robin group, but never a bee. Maybe next time around. Comments are closed.
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Welcome! I'm Sarah. As a milmompreneur maker, wherever I go, I quilt, teach & sew! {Bio} Archives:
December 2017
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