Bees and Things

I finally finished Feeling Stitchy's July challenge. I did the the bees twice; they were way scary in a pure black next to all the other subtle colors. Again, I ran to my Valdani thread colors - what can I say, I'm smitten with them! I'm pretty happy with Mrs. Bee, but I'm tempted to redo Mr. Bee for a third time..

This kitchen towel is part of a thank you gift for a friend that lives out of state. Utah (where I live) is the beehive state, so this seemed an appropriate gift. I'm going to fill a gift basket with a number of other Utah treats - chocolate truffles, Polygamy Porter microbrews, and more.

And I stayed up late quilting last night. What? Yeah, the Universe is pretty hilarious. It was really hard for me to confess yesterday about my lack of desire to design. Once I purged all my fears, I was flooded with ideas and couldn't wait to get back to it. More on that later..

I received a layer cake of polka dot fabric from my quilt guild last Thanksgiving. I was afraid if I placed it with my stash that it would be forgotten and never played with. I diced the fabric into squares and circles using my AccuQuilt Studio and Sizzix machine.

When I started playing with squares, it started to feel a lot like Tetris. I loved that game as diversion during my college years! Thought a rainbowific Tetris quilt would be fun. I thought for a minute that I must be clever and then it dawned on me that I wasn't probably the first to think of this. I found this fabulous Tetris quilt-a-long online over at Happy Quilting. I don't have enough squares to do the challenge, but it looks like great fun if you are interested.

I can't wait to finish this one up! I bought a Juki/Grace midarm earlier this month.. such a joy to me that deserves its own blog post later this week ;o)