Bee Desi with Sandhya K

Jan's queen bee is the very versatile crafter and quilter, Sandhya K. Over to her..

Strings and Four Patch Block.

This is my block after much thought and search for a simple but interesting Quilt Block. I love scrappy and I love 4 patch.

To make this block I chose random strips called strings and then picked up two dominant colours from the strings to make the 4 patch.

You will need 2 solids that are 9” square and a bunch of strings that are 9 inches long. You can go as scrappy as you want with the strings but all should be from printed fabric.

Here are strips of fabric called strings in the Quilting lingo. They are between 1.5 and 2.5 inches in width. Length can be whatever. You can even join two small pieces to get the length. I have chosen random colours but you can see that pink is the dominant colour. (But I am not even very fond of PINK :-))

For the solids for the 4 patch I chose the pink as it was the dominant colours in the strings and turquoise as it goes well with pink and also with many other colours.

Now to make the 4 patch. Take the pink 9” X 9” solid fabric and fold into half and cut to get a 9” X 4.5” rectangle. Do the same with the turquoise fabric. Join. You will have 2 such pieces as shown on the left in the picture below. Join lengthways to make a two coloured squares. Sub cut both in to half and stitch to make a 4 patch by stitching pink to turquoise.

Here are the stitched two 4 patch blocks. Trim them to 8” square. Now this is done keep it aside.

Now take the strings and if you have them about 9” long then start joining them lengthwise to make a 9” square. If your strings are short you can add and make it 9” long. Square your string block to the exact size of the 4 patch. And arrange it like this.

First join one end of 4 patch and one end of string square to make this.
Make other the same.

Now join these two units together to make a block like this.

This will make a block a little bigger than 15.5 inches. Square it to 15.5 inches and you are done.

Seams can go any way you are comfortable with. All on one side or every other seam to one side or all facing inside or outside. I tried making the whirly thing with the seam at the center and got it well. Here is the closeup of it.

A little out of focus. :-)

Thanks
-Sandhya

First Quilts - DQ Prajakta

(Guest post by DQ Prajakta, the 9th in our series of 'First Quilts')

A Tale of Four pillow covers and half a bedsheet 

As a kid I remember doing lots of things with my grandmother As her first grandchild I had all the liberty to do anything and everything in the house even as child. I vividly remember our first experiment, a cake (more mine then hers ) and also the look on our maid's face when she saw the kitchen. We moved on to knitting, embroidery and then stitching; but when it came to school craft projects it was always she who used finish them for me while I used to be out playing.

Vacations were always fun reading books and learning something new from my granny till one fine day just before my Class Ten exams my father picked up all my craft stuff ( other than the school stuff) and threw it all away since I was always seen either knitting or embroidering than studying, which in his eyes was a crime.

It has been a long time since then and it was only after moving to Bahrain that I again started indulging myself in my hobby with no job ( since i recently resigned) and 5 hours of metime in the mornings when my daughter goes to school and also due to "DESI QUILTERS" . It felt like "bliss" and to add that the October challenge rules which actually pushed me to do the quilt and to add to it my loving hubby's" katkat" Why have you bought so much fabric? Why do you want to buy more fabric ? We always have to pay excess baggage when coming back after holiday to India because of your fabric shopping?

My first quilt can be described well as " A tale of four pillow covers and a half a bedsheet" . When I started, I had no plan in mind, since it was to be a strip quilt and it could be hand quilted .I wanted a bright quilt as I was tired of the dominance of PINK in my daughter's bedroom so I choose her second favourite colours green and orange . It took me a week to finish the quilt and during that time my living room and the dining table looked like a battlefield , but the effort was worth it. I made a lot of mistakes as I did not plan the quilt layout, which I want to overcome in my next quilt ( for my brand new nephew). 

I did miss my grandma's critical comments on my first quilt since I lost her a few years back, but thanks to my first quilt I relived my childhood with a trip down the memory lane to enjoy those precious moments which I had with my grandmother. 

Happy Quilting DQs!

-Prajakta

DQ Oct'12 Challenge - Winner

The fact that there were a record 18 entries for the DQ October 2012 Challenge brought much joy to all Desi Quilters. Along with it, it brought much confusion and dilemma as it became increasingly difficult to choose and vote for only three entries for the final round. After much consideration, the votes were finally cast, and due to a tie, we have not three but four finalists !

Manju

Tina

Damayanthi

Madhu

And the winner picked by the random number generator is...(drumroll pls)..DQ Manju !

Congratulations Manju ! You get these lovely goodies from BERNINA India :

A BERNINA ' Pin Holder '...




... alongwith a BERNINA ' Magnetic Bobbin Holder '...

..and a current issue of the BERNINA ' Inspiration ' magazine, full of creative inspirational ideas and DIY projects..



Congrats once again, Manju ! Thank you Bernina !