Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Scrap-bee-licious January Bee Block

A very happy new year everyone!!!! What better way to start the year than as the "queen" for Scrap-bee-licious bee this month. I am thrilled to be included as part of this very talented group of ladies. 

For my turn I just had to pick the feather block by Anna Maria Horner. The free tutorial can be downloaded from here. The patchwork tutorial is for two feathers per block, but I am asking only for two feathers. Please do not join the two feather blocks together. Each block finishes at 9.5" x 18.5" including 1/4" seam allowance. If the block does not measure up in the end don't worry, I can always adjust the size later.

A quick tutorial on how to maximize the fabric for the feathers can be found here.

Now for the fun part, colors.

Feather:  Bold, jewel tone colors. You can choose as many or as few as you would like. AMH fabric is not a requirement. Here is a sampling of a few colors you can choose or any other color that qualifies as a bold color.







The center stem can be any dark colored fabric.


Background: Anything beige, eggshell, cream, bone or low volume fabric with a similar creamy undertone. It can be a solid or a print. The look I am going for is similar to this lovely quilt made by Jolene of Blue Elephant Stitches. It's almost like she read my mind on this one.
I would prefer not having bright white or light gray/blue background for the blocks. If you have trouble finding fabric for the background, let me know I can mail you some.

I gave the block a try to ascertain what my fellow bee members were in for. Actually the block is easier to make than it looks. The key is to remember to cut the left side of the feather as a mirror image of the right side.

This is how I cut the feather template.

The right side of the feather.

Left side of the feather, as a mirror image of the left.

I used sticky tape to secure the template to the fabric before cutting. This prevented it from moving around.



Essentially when cutting the right side of the feather place the templates as


And for the left side place them as, mirror image of the above.


The completed block.


Let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you all. Looking forward to see what you come up with.


3 comments:

  1. Yessss. This is a great block. I was thinking about it for my queen bee month with the guild in February :D

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  2. Oh thank you so much for showing how to piece little scraps to get the feather shape cut out! (instead of piecing slabs and creating a bunch of waste). I cut 52 x 2 feather halves (enough to make a queen size quilt) and it basically made me so sick of template cutting that my feather quilt is my forever-WIP :) So, maybe you'll motivate me to pick my own Feather Bed quilt back up.

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  3. I have always wanted to try these - so excited :-)

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