Blocks and Bees

Well it seems like such a long time since I have posted, but that might be because my last two posts were scheduled to appear whilst I was on holiday. Now that we are back from our amazing trip, which I will definitely bore you with once I have worked my way through the hundreds of photos I took, it is time to get back down to earth with a bump and start looking at my commitments for May.

Before that though a quick peek of the patchwork inspiration I was surrounded by on holiday :)

Tiling, Uzbekistan

My head is spinning with possible patterns for quilts and blocks!

Speaking of blocks I came home to lots of happy mail from my month in April as Queen Bee of the Fat Stash Brit Bee. There were still a few blocks to come when I took this photo but here is how the blocks are looking so far.

The blocks are destined to be a quilt for our youngest son, but my niece is expecting her second baby this week, so if it is a boy it may just end up going his way instead :)

For May, Rachel has asked us to make a floating star block with tone-on-tone blacks as the background for all but the middle and cheerful scraps for the triangle corners that make up the star. I had never come across this block before, but I really liked it so will be squirrelling away the instructions for future use.

The next meeting of my new Quilt Group is on Wednesday so I have also been trying to make some attempt to catch up on the blocks that I missed at the beginning. The first block the group attempted was a Log Cabin block, so that was first on my list.

Stupidly, I used a lone fat quarter of a white tone-on-tone for the background of my first block, blithely assuming that it would be no problem to buy extra when I needed it. Needless to say, neither of the LQS's had the same fabric in stock, so I went for the nearest alternative in the hope that when it is cut up the difference between the two fabrics won't be so noticeable!

At the class on Wednesday we will be tackling a Mariners' Compass block, should be interesting :)

Thanks to everyone who linked up in my absence to

and

 I really enjoyed reading about your projects on my return.

Finally, another shot of more stitching inspiration, EPP anyone??

Linking up to