Scrappiness is Happiness: Week 1

The Scrappiness is Happiness Quilt Along has begun, and I'll be quilting along with Lori Holt and the Fat Quarter Shop for the next 32 weeks. 

This week's block is Buzzy Bee. I'm using my collection of Alison Glass fabrics, and even finagled some thematic fussy cutting.

To keep myself sorted, I'm labeling the cut pieces with Alphabitties and tiny clothespins from the dollar store.

If you want to spare yourself some serious FOMO (fear of missing out), I recommend you join along. 

We'll be doing a block each week, from Scrappiness is Happiness by Lori Holt of Bee in My Bonnet Co. so you'll need to secure a copy to get your instructions. 

Also, download the finishing pattern for fabric allotments and the setting instructions. If you want to use the same Lori Holt fabrics as Kimberly or Fat Quarter Shop, you will need:

• Lori Holt’s Scrappy Happy Starter Fat Quarter Bundle
• Lori Holt’s Scrappy Backgrounds Fat Quarter Bundle
• Lori Holt 20″ x 108″ Sew-in Interfacing by Lori Holt of Bee in my Bonnet
  • This is optional and only needed for one of the blocks.

Kimberly will be sewing with Prairie by Lori Holt for Riley Blake Designs, including the Prairie Fat Quarter Bundle, Teal Fiddle for background and borders, Coral Homespun for binding, and Coral Dress Heirloom for backing.

For the Buzz Bee block, check page 14 of Scrappiness is Happiness and view the following video.

For extra fun, Fat Quarter Shop is offering prizes. Follow @fatquartershop and @beelori1on Instagram and tag your blocks with #ScrappinessIsHappinessQAL. Add the button to your social media.

Right-click the image to download and share on social media so everyone knows you’ll be sewing along!

Let me know in the comments if you'll be joining along.

Layer Cake Tumble

Looking for a quick quilt? My most recent finish, Layer Cake Tumble,  makes use of a layer cake and junior jelly roll. And if you are thinking I'm tempting you with dessert, these are actually precut 10' squares and a half-size set of 2 1/2" strips. 

As for dessert, I recently made a Grapefruit Cake. Except today I dropped it, upside-down onto my kitchen floor, Wilton turntable included. Whomp whomp. I may have used a bread knife to cut the bottom part (newly positioned as the top) off for salvaging. 😬 But you are all sworn to secrecy as to why the remaining cake has been settled into a plastic storage container.

Back to the quilt. My fabrics of choice were a Firefly Layer Cake by Sarah Watts for Ruby Star Society and a black Bella Solids Junior Jelly Roll. I adore the moths, fireflies, and mushrooms. Posing alongside the layer cake are my OLFA Splash rotary cutter and 6" Sweet Snips. Besides being pretty and in my favorite color, they are primo at their function.

   

If you want to make things easy for yourself, Fat Quarter Shop has a quilt kit featuring Picnic Pop by Me & My Sister Designs available. There's even a backing set to help you coordinate your finish. 

If you want to make things harder for yourself, which seems to be my specialty, pick directional fabrics, and then be overly compulsive about them all facing upward. In reality, even though this pattern looks complicated, it's a misnomer. Every block is composed the same way, and constructed of only three pieces. 

After a recent quilting project that I complete with a really dense, small scale free-motion design, I decided to up the scale in an effort to finish in a more gratifying time span for this quilt. I decided on a paisley using Superior So Fine 715 Ezz Rock for the top and solid black to match an Alison Glass black fabric I chose for backing. It would have been advisable to check my tension before getting too carried away, as I have some spots on the back where the top thread has pulled to the back, revealing a loop of brilliant orange and hot pink. My Albuquerque Modern Quilt Guild long-arm group, a group of talented quilters and fine human beings, suggested using a mirror below the back to get a better perspective of how things are going.

Check out the YouTube video and download the free pattern. Share your version using the hashtags #LayerCakeTumbleQuilt and #ShortcutQuilt.

FYI October 2022

A collaboration with free quilt block patterns? Yes, please! Sign up for the Solstice Sampler. Check out everyone's blocks on IG at #SolsticeSampler2022.

Natalia of Piece N Quilt is giving free access to the 9 Patch 3.0 Quilt Along. Sign up to get the 12 free lessons for stitching.

This month, Quilt Block Mania is featuring farm-themed blocks. Gather your chickens...ahem, blocks... before the end of the month.

What other fun is happening that I neglected to mention?