no dead bees, just a black and blue one...

Oooh there's a few things I can tell you now that I've been holding back on... It's my bee month!  I've been excited about this for so long, I guess I might be a bit over excited...  but hey, when you have the balance of a toddler, the napping needs of a toddler, the attention span of a toddler..well, lets just say I think I should be allowed to indulge myself in childish excitement every once in a while too eh?  I made up the bee packages as wee goodie bags...  I managed to reign myself in a bit and stopped myself adding a balloon and a sparkler...lol  Well, I just wanted my bee ladies to get a good laugh.

On to the fabrics...  Way way back in April I decided I wanted a black and blue colour scheme.  Lord knows why... but I did, and I'd been gathering the odd bit for a bundle since then.  Not easy when you only get fabric online!  I've ended up with a spare bundle of "blues" that are actually green... but that's another quilt..  I'm happy to say that only 2 fabrics were full price purchases, the rest were bargains!  Anyway...  I also wanted to have a go at dying fabric too, so I picked 3 black and white prints and 2 shades of dylon hand dye (one fabric was to go thru both!).  Numpty that I am I forgot to take before pics to show, but here are the results anyway

I have to say, some of it was decidedly patchy...  and I wasn't convinced that they looked like the colour on the packet either... but overall, I'm happy with them.  I got a couple of blue fingers, but nothing up the nose this time ;-)  I'm glad I tried something that was on my list of things to try this year!

So, this week I spent 3 days cutting up fabric... Yup, three days...  I was knackered by the end of it!  This time I do have a before pic.

I really struggled with what to send, and how much to send.  I've never done this before, and not having a particular block in mind I couldn't plan it that way!  I just couldn't make my mind up at all (can you tell?)  I spent days planning what cuts to make... in the end I went with all of them!

So, Monday-Wednesday cutting fabric, Thursday making and sending parcels.  Friday I washed down the walls in the kitchen and dining cupboard.  What?!  Yup.  Well, lets just say I kinda had to... fell asleep after I put the tatties on to boil and woke up to a veritable steam room(s) with rivers of grubby water running down the walls.  Hooray for washable paint...  
Good day on Saturday tho, got this top finished!

It's all sashed now, and has a black border round it too.  So far I've not spotted any remaining tea stains either, yay!  I'm much happier with it now.  Thank you so much for all the encouragement you gave me to stick with it!

                    XXX