Make progress, not dinner

Do you have those days where you simply cannot tear yourself away from your sewing machine and suddenly it is 6 o'clock and the natives are restless? Hungry? Opening and closing the fridge every 5 minutes hoping a meal will suddenly appear?  Well, I have those days every day. I distinctly remember a great line from a presentation I saw by Jane Sassaman once where she said "If no one asks about dinner, I'm certainly not going to mention it!"

I am still playing catch up since our travel in March and am slowly plugging away at bee blocks in between sewing stints at D's circus school in preparation for the big production, Blue Sky Circus in two weeks. I'm helping with costumes and have sewn my first serger seams!  Unfortunately, 10 hours of cutting in one week was partly responsible for my back spasm, but I'm slowly returning to normal thanks to my massage therapist and chiropractor.

I am in two bees at present (and I've decided that two concurrent bees is plenty for me!).  First up, the Free Bee. This one is a really fun challenge every month. The idea is to make free-pieced blocks within some sort of guideline specified by the Queen (or in the case of this group, King) Bee each month. We use our own stash.  Both John and Dan are in the Free Bee!

I first had to make Krista's March block which is awfully late:

In fact, so late I made another smaller one to go with it.

Krista's making a 'Modern Mood' quilt inspired by the work of Sherri Lynn Woods. You can read more about these stunning quilts at Sherri's blog here.

Then today I made this block for Ethne, which I think turned out really well.

Ethne's inspiration comes from graphic images in a calendar by Leah Duncan. She asked us to use any dark blue as background and solids or hand dyes for the triangle highlights.  I think both of these Free Bee quilts will be a fabulous challenge to assemble and I look forward to seeing them come together!

Finally, here's a block I made for Elizabeth in the Stash Trad Bee. In this excellent bee we are making traditional blocks with modern fabrics from our stash each month. This is a fabulous block and you can make one yourself using Elizabeth's Radiant Ring tutorial here.  Elizabeth requested either a cool-, or a warm-coloured block from each of us.

Well, it's 5:00 p.m. and that means I can cram another hour of sewing in before people will be thinking about food. I hope that my next post will be my Dresden Pillow pattern release. It's all set up and ready to go, I'm just awaiting confirmation of my new Paypal account.  So exciting!!