Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Modern Maples - October Bee Blocks

Happy Fall to everyone in the northern hemisphere (Happy Wednesday to everyone else).

October is my month to be Queen Bee my New Quilt Bloggers Bee (we all met during Plum and June's New Quilt Blogger Blog Hop).

I love this time of year! Unfortunately, there is no autumn in South Florida. I miss the cooler weather, and seeing the leaves change. It does cool down a bit, but it's just not the same. To make up for the lack of seasons here, I decided I'd like to have a cozy, modern maple quilt.

I asked my bee friends to make some modern maples out of any leafy colored fabrics, with a grey background. Mine were all made from Amy Butler's Hapi line, and a mix of Kona Solids and Essex Yarn Dyed in black. I was glad I had the chance to make something with these fabrics that was larger than a 1" hexie...
 
My green leaf, very fitting for Florida.
 
To make the modern maples I used the tutorial from Modern Handcraft. I made my stems a bit thinner than they were in the tutorial.



I thought it would be fun to play with different sizes, so I gave everyone an option of making 12" blocks (from the tutorial), or a larger 18" block. To make the 18" block, I just resized the units to 6.5." It worked well with this larger scale fabric, and it was nice to end up with such a large block in the same amount of time. I think I'll be making more oversized blocks in the future.


This is my favorite leafy fabric in the bunch.  
I really like how these turned out, and I love the mix of the warm (and green) colors on the grey background. I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the group creates next month!

Happy Wednesday!

Linking up with Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday and Nini and the Sea's Weekly Inspiration Linky Party.
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6 comments:

  1. Karen @ Pieces of ContentmentSeptember 24, 2014 at 7:37 PM

    This is a great idea - you will end up with a wonderful quilt of many colours and extra interest with varying block sizes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. LizSeptember 24, 2014 at 7:47 PM

    These look great, Kate! I love the idea of mixing up the block sizes and mixing up the autumn and summer leaf colours too. Great choice for a bee block, I can't wait to see it finished!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Steffi´s Candy QuiltsSeptember 25, 2014 at 6:56 AM

    Hi Kate, leafes in different sizes will surely look great.
    Thank you for your comment on my blog. Not sure if you know that you are a no-reply blogger, so I could not answer you by mail. ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nini And The SeaSeptember 25, 2014 at 9:32 PM

    I'm loving these! I recently made some leaves too but mine didn't have the little stem, I really like that on yours! Your quilt will be awesome! Thanks for linking up!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Granny Maud's GirlSeptember 27, 2014 at 5:21 PM

    Your bee mates should have lots of fun choosing bright colours for these blocks, based on the cheery brights you have chosen. I look forward to seeing all the fun blocks come together.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Leonard GatesJune 21, 2022 at 4:26 AM

    Grateful for sharing tthis

    ReplyDelete

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