Sewcial Bee Sampler Blocks

Like an itch you just have to scratch, I continued making the rest of the 25 blocks for the 2017 Sewcial Bee Sampler. I knew that if I started focusing on the next pattern I plan to release, the stack of blocks might get put back in the cupboard and I really didn’t want that. Here are the last nine blocks I made since I pulled this UFO project out last week. The first two were in a previous post, and all been shown on Instagram.

Top row: Block 17 Spools and Block 18 Square Peg; Bottom: Block 19 Circle of Friends and Block 20 Irish Chain Variation

This quilt along was hosted by Sharon Holland and Maureen Cracknell, both designers for Art Gallery Fabrics. It was the first one they did. 
I started doing it with Tish as a New Year project in 2018, making the first two blocks on New Year's Eve, sewing 'together'. How can that be almost eight years ago? Here are the first three blocks I made, two that night, and one on New Year's Day 2018.

These were made upstairs in the half-storey attic-type room where I first sewed before we did our major renovations in 2019.

I had decided to use one of three fat quarter packs I received as a subscription gift for Christmas, Maureen's Fleet and Flourish line. It has a wide variety of motifs in fairly soft colours. 

Top: Block 21 Hourglass and Block 22 Mosaic; Bottom: Block 23 Card Trick Star (my own substitution) and Block 24 Crosses and Losses

Below is the final block, #25, Prairie Queen. I had to get creative to get the background patches out of the oh-so-pretty floral print, but I got it: 1/8" seams on one of the HSTs and three of the four 2 ½" squares, and two other HSTs cut from 3 ½" wide fabric as opposed to 3 ⅞".

You may recall Block 18, Square Peg, irritated me a bit because of two HSTs, that, because of making them two at a time and working with fabrics with stripes and lines, ended up going the wrong way within the block. I let it sit, but it was irritating my mind all week. I did take a look at the other blocks and noticed that in several, the lines were not all oriented in the same direction, so I thought it would be fine once it was quilted. And yet.

As I fussed with the last blocks, which, you will notice, do all have lines running in the same directions, I thought yep, I need to cut out those four HSTs and pop them in. So, a little surgery ensued:

And reinserted:

And now I can stop twitching. I think it bugged me more than the earlier blocks because with them, there were several patches oriented in varying directions, whereas here, it was just two. No I will sleep better.

Because I do not want to put the stack of 25 back in the cupboard, I took a quick gander through the stash to see if I had anything suitable for the sashing that goes between the blocks. I thought maybe something in very soft pink at first, but I don't have even a metre of anything suitable, so than I thought maybe a soft aqua leaning to green because of the soft blue and pale green fabrics in the original collection. Well, look what I found within a moment in my stack of aqua yardage:

There is only a yard, so it will be enough for the sashing, but not for the outer border, so back to the yardage shelves I went and spied on top of the pink pile another Maureen Cracknell print that is just perfect, and has enough for the four borders! I plan to press the Makower fabric and start cutting 2 ½" strips for the sashing pieces, but I'm also going to load the Cheerio quilt from Cathy and friends onto Avril so I can get it quilted and finished. It feels so good to get another UFO out of the cupboard and coming out in the world!