a bee in my bonnet..... finally

For anyone who likes to spend time on the internet looking at quilty stuff, it is more than likely you have come across this quilt somewhere in your bloggy travels or pinterest browsing.....

This gorgeously cute quilt was designed by Lori Holt of Bee in My Bonnet, and was offered as a free row-along on her blog for several months over late last year and earlier this year.

The tutorials are still on her blog, but all the cutting instructions have now been removed, as this quilt - and lots of other pretty projects based on it - are now being published in this book, due out in October.

One of my favourite quilts in this forthcoming book is this 'Apples' quilt, mainly in these gorgeous reds and greens.

I love Lori's row-along quilt, and thought it was a good chance to use lots of the brights, pastels and cute prints that I have bought and saved over the years, as my taste in fabric has currently gone back to the more repro/civil war styles.

So I roped in invited my friend Amanda to join me, as I knew she would love this quilt too, and we have just started having our own monthly row-along.  We had our first get-together yesterday, and progress so far is -

the beginnings of the 'butterflies' row

and starting to cut the 96 x 1.5 inch squares needed for the small squares row.

Lori uses a different technique in her tutorial for making this row, but Amanda did say that she thought that it made accurate piecing more difficult, and recommended I just do them the 'old fashioned' way.  This is just the beginning of cutting these squares - quite a few more to go yet!

Progress was a little slow, as having not seen much of Amanda for some time, lots of talking and not so much sewing was the order of the day....  Our lovely friend Gabbie joined us for a bit of a catch up too, and much chatting and drinking of cups of tea was enjoyed by all.

I also started another small project - this is just a 'sneak peek' and not too much can be revealed yet!

Hope you are all having a lovely week

Ollie & Tania xxx