Modern Irish {Scrappy} Bee: June Block

And it's June already! If you knew how many times I've been changing my mind with my block design… But I must thank Cindy who gave me the little push I needed to stick to my original plan. This is how it happened: back in January I started to look around Google Images for inspiration on "modern quilts", I looked through all my quilting books and magazines, admired the most amazing scrappy blocks and quilts on other blogs… and then I saw one that caught my eye on Flickr, this "Confetti Quilt" had what I was aiming for. All those bits of scraps scattered randomly on a plain background.

"Confetti quilt" by Threekitchenfairies

The second round of inspiration came when I was flicking through a book about the Solar System and saw photos of Supernova Stars. Something more or less like this:

photo from wyalusing.org

So that's when I started to sketch some blocks on graph paper until I came up with a block that had random patches like the confetti quilt and a become a Supernova star cluster when pieced together with three more blocks. I imagine my quilt like this:

Please don't panic! (that's why I changed my mind so many times, I was afraid it would be too complicated!). But I've managed to simplify the pattern. If you look closely, the block is divided into four squares, and each square can be divided in 3 columns…

Here's the two blocks I've made, which would be half a star…:

It requires a bit of organisation when cutting, especially the white background, but once you have everything ready, the instructions are pretty straight forward. I'd say it takes about an hour to make one block, but I will ask you for 2 hours of your precious time to make two of them, please don't kill me…

I would like you to use Kona white for the background and a range of red scraps (light, medium, dark), you can include a bit of pink and burgundy, but the main colour is red. One or two dark squares placed at the corner, where the centre of the star would be and the rest can spread out between medium and light. I don't mind if they have a hint of white or any other colour as long as it doesn't take over, since the squares are only 1".

I have written the instructions in PDF format, there are 5 pages but that's because the diagrams (tables really) take up most of the space. I so wish I could use a proper software for writing quilt patterns! but I'm hopeless with computers…

I hope you like it. There is no rush at all and I'll be happy to help if you have any questions. Thank you!

-Irina