do. Good Stitches {A Charity Bee} - February Blocks

Our February project for do. Good Stitches {A Charity Bee}was designed by my friend Hollie. She was inspired by this quilt to make a village themed quilt. Many of the group members chose to paper piece but I stuck to applique since I had never paper pieced before (and of course I was running late on making them).

For my first block I used some scrap brown I had leftover from one of the wedding party quilts I made last year. I ironed on some lite heat and bond to the back side and drew a tree shape. I ironed the tree on to a 12.5" square of white fabric and then machine appliqued some hexagons on. I sewed down 5 sides of each hexagon using a zig-zag stitch in green thread, pulled the paper and my basting stitches out, and sewed the 6th side down. I then switched to a brown thread and my free motion foot to create bark detailing.

photo of my block taken by Hollie

Hollie was nice enough to take a picture of the back of my block and point out the bark details in a recent post about this quilt. I have to admit, I didn't really pay attention to how it looked on the back when I was making it but I really like the way it looks now that I see it!

For my second block I used some of the same brown as my tree to create flower bed boxes and some solid green scraps for the plant. I added some free motion wood grain detailing on each box and leaves for each plant. I finished the block off by adding flowers to two of the plants in pink and orange. I left two of the plants 'in bud' so to speak. Really, I just ran out of embroidery thread in suitable flower colors...

You should definitely go check out all of the blocks our circle made for this quilt! Hollie has separated them into groupings for the front and back of the quilt: Big City and Enchanted Forrest.

March is almost over and I still haven't made my blocks for Emily's yellow, sky, slate, and peony Circle quilt. More to come on those blocks hopefully later this week...

Happy Quilting!