Bottled Rainbow Quilt Along *Lime & Eggplant Blocks*

I've been working on a lot of different projects this week.  I finished up the lime & eggplant blocks for my Bottled Rainbow Quilt Along.  The lime I-spy block is jam packed with cute little animals (and a couch).  An alligator, a monkey, 1/2 of a frog, two owls, a turtle, three birdies, & an elephant. 

The eggplant block was a challenge for me.  Even with the help of two friends, it was hard to come up with enough scraps for this block.  My Dad says he "loves it", I say, "eh..it's not my fav."  Maybe that's because it's all flowers and no little critters, who knows (except the Halloween cat)?

I had a few "firsts" this week.  My first "first" is that a girlfriend of mine asked me if I could hem a pair of designer jeans for her.  I knew I wouldn't be able to replicate the stitching on the bottom of the jeans so I was in a bit of a bind.....until....I found this tutorial!  You actually use the original hem and it looks amazing.  This is seriously so easy, I don't know why I didn't think to try hemming jeans before.  Now my husband can stop rolling up his jeans that are too long.  (I know, I know!)

My second "first" this week is that I am learning how to work with hexigons.  For my next bee block for A Notion or Two bee, Jenny of Mommymae.com is giving us creative freedom to create our block for her anyway we'd like, as long as it is made with hexi's.  I was a little intimidated at first because I thought you HAD to paper piece and hand stitch hexi's.  Boy was I wrong!  I found this amazingly simple video, where you neither have to paper piece nor hand stitch these little puppies.  Thank you Lady Harvatine!!! 

Jenny sent us fabric from Darlene Zimmerman's line, Betty Dear.  Our blocks are to be 14.5" unfinished.  I printed out a few templetes for the hexis and taped them all together. I then cut it down to 14.5" so that I have a template to use when designing my block.  It has really been helpful even though it is deceiving because after I lay them all out, I will really need almost double the amount of hexi's because they shrink so much with the seam allowance and there will be no white space like there is in this template.

The last "first" is that I won my first blog giveaway!  And boy was it an awesome one to win!  Sarah of FairyFace Designs gave away the biggest bag of scraps, an adorable pin cushion, & a bar of Irish chocolate.  I don't even know if I'd call some of the fabric scraps, more like, Fat Quarters!!!  Thank you so much, Sarah.  What a generous giveaway!!!

The chocolate has been consumed, the scraps have already been separated for Bottled Rainbows and the pin cushion is in use.  Thanks again, Sarah!

~Val