Social Quilting and the Lovely Bee Swarm

One of my goals this year has been to be social with my quilting. I have been looking for opportunities to connect with other quilters, participating in things like Quilts for Pulse and Quilts for Peace.

"49 Hearts" made for Quilts for Pulse

This quilt hangs at the Dallas Police Department in memory of the five officers lost on July 7, 2016. I made the two heart with stripes. Our neighbor and friend, who is an officer for our local country department donated the patches.

I've also met new quilty friends by participating in quilt alongs, where someone posts a pattern in steps and quilters from all over work on the same pattern together. Earlier this year, I finished Bonnie Hunter's En Provence Mystery quilt.

Currently, I'm working on Grandma's Kitchen quiltalong with Pat Sloan and Blossom Heart Quilts's Milky Way Sampler. 

Locally, I made charity quilts with my church's quilting group. This quilt found a home in a Russian orphanage. 

I haven't participated in any swaps yet. I always seem to hear about them too late. But, I did get into an online quilting bee this year sponsored by Blossom Heart Quilts. My "swarm" is the Lovely Bee Swarm. Here are the blocks I've made so far this year. 

In addition to meeting a new group of quilters, it's been fun to dig into my stash and make blocks I might not have considered if not for this group. 

In August, it's my turn to be the queen bee! I chose the Abacus block in deep purples and lavenders. 

I'm so excited to receive happy mail when I get back from vacation. Before I left, I already received this block and goodies from one of my swarm members! So much pretty purple!!

Do you do any social quilting? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

You can see what else I'm up to on Instagram. Follow me at dejongdreamhouse.

Linked to:
Finished or Not Friday @ Busy Hands Quilts
Let's Bee Social #190 @ Sew Fresh Quilts
Linky Tuesday @ Freemotion by the River
Main Crush Monday @ Cooking Up Quilts
Midweek Makers #85 @ Quilt Fabrication
Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt
Moving It Forward @ Em's Scrapbag
NTT @ My Quilt Infatuation
Off the Wall Friday @ Nina Marie

Oh Scrap! @ Quilting is More Fun than Housework

TGIFF @ A Quarter Inch from the Edge
Wednesday Wait Loss 28 @ Inquiring Quilter
Whoop Whoop Friday @ Confessions of a Fabric Addict
WIP on Wednesday @ Esther's Blog

En Provence Clue 4

I'm very happy to say that after the craziness of two weeks ago, I had a very restful and productive week. I finished a quilt, which always makes me happy.

I also went back and wrote a post about my first finish of the year. 

I also finished a quilt top made of blocks of what was intended to be a tree skirt 3 years ago when I was a new quilter and didn't know that fabric went out of print. It's been sitting in my UFO pile forever so it feels great to have found a way to finish it. 

I found some fun minky for the back and got it sandwiched, but I don't think I'll quite finish it before the end of the year. 

But back en Provence...

I'm making good progress on the Quiltville mystery quilt. Clue 4 was released 3 days ago, and I finished it 2 days later. We'll be busy with the holidays over the next couple weeks so it feels good to be caught up before I get behind. 

This week we played with purple again--my favorite, using the tri-rec ruler sets--that I'm learning to love. I'm still a little leary of triangle-in-squares given that I sliced my finger so badly on the first set. On slashed finger news, I'm getting my stitches out tomorrow. I'm a little nervous because it's been just over two weeks and I still can't bend it all the way. And one of the stitches is ingrown. Ouch!

I'm only doing half the number of units because I'm making a smaller version of the mystery quilt. For this clue, I only needed to make 40 units. 

I don't know how many weeks of clues are coming, but it looks like we're getting close to making some blocks out of these units. In my project bin you can see that my yellows and greens haven't been touched yet. 

I saw how others played around with the units to try to guess what blocks we may create. Here are a few I made.

And here a couple more.

Previous posts for this quiltalong:

Intro and fabric selection

Clues 1 and 2

Clue 3

You can also follow me on Instagram at de Jong Dream House. To see more pictures of this quilt in progress, look for #djdhenprovence.

In case I don't get another post up before Christmas, may your holiday season be full of wonder. 

Linked to:

Mystery Monday Link Up @ Quiltville

En Provence Clue 3

Well friends, I did it. I survived our craziest week of the year. A week ago, I wasn't sure if I would!

Let's recap.

Sunday: 

I sliced my finger, got stiches, and was in horrible pain.

But it was the night before Sinterklaas and since the good holy man needs a little help with his work here in the States. Since I could not finish the gevulde speculaas (stuffed gingerbread bars) I started, Niels got to play nursemaid and baker. The day also involved making goodie bags and supervising our little guy as he created a Google slides presentation for his class.

Monday: Sinterklaas!

Niels and I went to our son's school for the 4th Sinterklaas in a row. This was the first year that he did the presentation and Q&A by himself, and he did an awesome job!

Later, during dinner, there was a loud knock on our door. Sinterklaas had delivered a bag of goodies! Oh how we hold in our hurt when we reward is seeing happy faces like this.

By the time our son happily went to bed, the pain in my finger had gotten intolerable. After a pointless few calls to our teledoc, we were sent back to the ER (for another $300 donation) for x-rays and some good drugs.

Tuesday:

Despite not getting home until 3, our shoes still managed to get filled with goodies.

As for the rest of the day, I blissfully slept through it all.

Wednesday:

Back to the land of the living. I went to the hand surgeon for a follow up on my hand. There was so concern that maybe I cut my bone or a tendon. The good news is that I didn't. The bad news is that with my brain injury, my brain freaks out with any nerve pain and that what was going on. It would let up eventually, but not yet.

I was sent over to the OT, who made this cute little fingertip cast for me. Then it was back to the land of the drugged out.

Thursday

At some point in the week, my son cuddled with me and sweetly asked if I would still be making him a birthday shirt for him. I had one day to get it done.

I was really nervous to make the first cut. And then my cast was a bit cumbersome.

Friday: My baby turned 8!

Balloons (tied with a new finger). Presents (wrapped by hubby). Dinner and cake and games (oh my!) enjoyed with our university students.

Also on Friday? Clue 3 was posted for Quiltville's En Provence Mystery Quilt! Alas, I had no time or energy to do anything but admire my pretty purples.

Saturday: Time to party!

Another busy day. Picking up the party cake. Out for lunch. And then my son's birthday party. 

His friends made him the best cards. I love the friendships he has made with this awesome group of boys and girls. And I am beyond proud that instead of accepting gifts for himself, he collected donations for the refugee resettlement agency we support.

Sunday: a much-needed day of rest.

I started the day with a little too much rest. We overslept and missed church. After all the joy and pain of this week, I think God understands what I needed most.

Once I finally drug myself out of bed, I re-discovered this room!

I was very relieved that this week we were back to four patches. I still need to finish clue 2, but I will wait until my stitches are out or those triangles. Plus, purple makes me happy.

Several people suggested I wear a klutz glove from now on. I actually bought one after the last time I sliced my finger, but I found I didn't like the way it felt so I stopped wearing it. However, since I don't need to wear my splint anymore, I found a new use for it.

And I found a way to make sure I don't forget to use it.

Fingers protected, I was a purple four patch making machine!

And done! 

And now, if you don't mind, I am hoping for a nice quiet week ahead!

Previous posts for this quiltalong:

Intro and fabric selection
Clues 1 and 2

You can also follow me on Instagram at de Jong Dream House. To see more pictures of this quilt in progress, look for #djdhenprovence.

Linked to:

Mystery Monday Link Up @ Quiltville
Needle & Thread Thursdays @  My Quilt Infatuation
Scraptastic Tuesday @ She Can Quilt

En Provence: Clues 1 and 2

Last week, I wrote about trying to be more social within the quilting community. One big thing I decided to do is join Quiltville's mystery quiltalong.

I got off to a late start so this week I worked on both clues 1 and 2.

Clue #1: 111 neutral four patches

I went a little nuts with cutting strips, especially because I'm only making the small version of the quilt.

So my lesson here is to cut fewer strips at a time because future clue will likely require strips of a different width. I don't use creams a lot, so I only bought 1/3" yard cuts. Everything else is from my stash. I figure I will stick to whites for my other neutral clues.

Because I needed 100 four patches, I did a lot of chain piecing, which gave a reason to use one of my favorite gadgets: the Thread Cutterz. I bought mine at a quilt show this summer. The inventor originally made it for fishers to cut line, but quilters got ahold of it, and now he has a second market.

Something fun I learned during this clue is how to "spin" my seams to create flatter blocks.

And before I knew it, clue 1 was complete!

Clue #2: 50 neutral triangles in magenta square#2.

On to Clue #2. I was feeling pretty good when I remember that I already bought a square in a triangle ruler set awhile back because an equilateral triangle quilt is in my queue. My son woke me up too early Sunday so I decided to do a little sewing before church. I'm itching to start my OMG goal quilt, but wanted to knock out clue #2 first.

I cut strips according to the instructions and started cutting. I learned my lesson to make a few at a time.

I got a little confused when I got to cutting the magenta strip. First of all, the ruler seemed backwards, but it had to be that way to get the right angle.

After four attempt that didn't work, I realized that with this ruler I have to cut the square strips 5/8" wider than then triangle strips. After I made the adjustment, I finally had one completed unit!

It didn't take long to complete the other 3 units from my first strips.

Now that I knew what I was doing, I was feeling pretty confident that I could complete the other 46 quickly...until I sliced through my finger.

Two hours later, I left the hospital with four stitches closing up the nice 4cm gash. Ow! Ow! Ow! (Thank you to the 300some fellow quilters who offered well wishes, prayers, and good humor while I was in the ER!)

The doc said no sewing this week, so I will have to have to enjoy everyone else's pictures, and maybe catch up on some blog posts this week, though typing is a bit of a challenge with my big ol' wrapped finger.

After the ER, my boys took me to ALDI to get the last of our goodies for Sinterklaas. I made homemade gevulde speculaas (stuffed gingerbread) for our son's class.

Since our ALDI is close to Joann, I asked if we could stop in to see if they had the ruler set Bonnie recommended. Not only did they have one set left, but it was 40% off! I bought it because when I looked at it, I saw how it was better than the one I had at home.

Here you can see the triangle pieces aren't very different, but the Tri Tool is more clearly marked.

The real difference can be seen on the "square" pieces. The Tri Tool uses strips the same size as the triangle. The Quilt Sense ruler strips need to be 5/8" wider. And again, the markings on the Tri Tool are easier to read and understand.

Looking at the tips, you can see the main difference, and how I was able to slice my finger so deeply. With the QuiltSense Ruler, I used my rotary cutter to trim that small angled bit. With the EZ Quilting Recs Tool, I only make straight cuts. Guess which one I will be using from now on?

Bonnie promised we'd learn a lot through this quilt along. So far, I'd say that's true. Hopefully the future clues will be a lot less painful!

Previous posts for this quiltalong:

Intro and fabric selection
Clue 3

You can also follow me on Instagram at de Jong Dream House. To see more pictures of this quilt in progress, look for #djdhenprovence.

Linked to :
Mystery Monday @ Quiltville

Let's Bee Social #154 @ Sew Fresh Quilts
Linky Tuesday @ Freemotion by the River
Midweek Makers @ Quilt Fabrication
Needle & Thread Thursday @ My Quilt Infatuation

WIP Wednesday @ Esther's Blog