I love an opportunity to play and my monthly improv bee blocks always offer me that chance.
In May, Ellyn selected a happy palette of colors for us to play with. Her theme was Shine. She shared this quote along with her prompt:
"In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present."
--Frances Bacon
Together with the theme of Shine, Ellyn asked us to use a variety of saturated sunshiny colors (inspiration list below) with a little Kona Lagoon (a turquoise which she provided) in each block.
Oranges: Tangerine, Kumquat, Orange, Orangeade
Cool Pinks: Bright pink, Candy pink, Sassy Pink, Bubblegum, Carnation, Peony,
Pink
Warm Yellows: Papaya, Sunny, Duckling, Corn Yellow, Canary
Pretty early on I knew I wanted to do something with radiating lines. Then I decided on a ring made of radiating lines. Here's the process on my first block:
My first step was to sew together wedges to make an approximate circle of fabric. I wasn't planning to use the center so I didn't concern myself with everything coming together neatly in the middle. I pressed my seams open (my general preference).
Using templates (not shown) I cut a hole out of the center of my pieced wedges and a coordinating piece of yellow to fill in the hole. Due to the bulk of the pieced seems I pressed this seam to the center. (You'll see that below.)
My next step was to use my template to cut the outer edge of my ring. I drew my templates on the dull side of freezer paper so I could iron the shiny side in place in order to cut my fabric.
You can see above that I cut with 1/4" seam allowance around that template piece. The marks you see were registration marks I transferred to my fabric on both pieces to use for lining things up and pinning in place.
Here's a quick peek of the back at this point. One thing you might notice here is that there are two lines on stitching on that first seam around the center yellow piece. This is because I did a stay stitch on the inner edge of the ring, 1/8" from the edge, before attaching it onto the yellow. I was worried since the ring was the concave edge for the next seam. When sewing curves together the concave piece gets stretched a bit. This stay stitch meant I didn't pop the seams in the ring. The important part of the stay stitch was across the seams, so on the wider strips of fabric I broke the thread so I could do the necessary stretch while sewing that seam.
My final step was to attach the background yellow and trim the block to about a 12 1/2" square.
The second block that I made for Ellyn is composed of improv quarter circle blocks with filler pieces to bring the block up to 12 1/2" square.
I hope you have a sunshiny day!
