Sew Fun June Blocks

Ever thought working in Television was lovely and glamourous? Well, think again my friends. Saturday afternoon I got a phone call informing me that I was booked on a flight to New York on Monday morning. Um, how about a "Hello. How you doing?" first. I wasn't armed with much other information than I was needed on location in New Jersey for an indefinite amount of time. Yeah, and I'm already behind on bee blocks and have a To Do List a mile long. Ugh. So I prioritized and started hustling, even waking up at 5:30 am yesterday morning to finish up a couple "Must Dos" before I left the house at 9:30 am to catch my flight. I didn't even have time to get to the post office, so my lovely and amazing husband is doing that for me.

I caught up on several Bee Blocks. I'm still behind, but I'm getting closer. Hopefully I'll only be out here on the road for a week, so I'll be able to catch up on the rest as soon as I get home. But my first priority was to finish up Amber's Bottled Rainbows block for the Sew Fun Bee. This one was the furthest past due.

She's making a king sized quilt, so these blocks were ginormous - not your standard Bottled Rainbows. She sent us out the frames already made, but couldn't find the batting she cut when she sent the packages out so it wasn't the standard QAYG method. Since the scraps are machine appliquéd onto the background, using some sort of stabilizer really makes difference, otherwise the fabric could pucker or bubble. I opted to use a lightweight fusible interfacing on the back of the white center to provide some stability for my appliqué. This worked like a dream. If you want to make these blocks but don't want to quilt-as-you-go, I would highly recommend using a lightweight interfacing as backing.

I've made this type of block before, and I used spray baste last time to keep the pieces in place after I settled on a layout. This time I tried something a little different. I cut double sided Steam-a-Seam into pieces the same size as my scraps to fuse them onto the fabric. It's a little more time consuming, but not really that much more, and it's cleaner - less gummy. Don't get me wrong, I love spray baste, but for a project with pieces this small, sometimes it can be a little annoying since it's an aerosol spray and covers larger spaces better than little tiny ones. So one more down and safely on it's way back home. I hope Amber loves it! P.S. It was also a little breezy when I was taking pictures of the blocks I caught up on this weekend. I just love seeing blocks and quilt tops blowing in the wind. It makes me happy.