Busy as a Bee

How do you like my snazzy little 'Busy as a Bee' zippered bag? It was a Christmas gift from Jane and I had plans for it to make its inaugural hand stitching project Halo, but things have changed. I brought out the project box to add to my piles and as I cut (and cut!) I realized that as much as sewing curves isn't my favourite thing to do, I was even less keen on doing all of the pinning required to make them by hand.

So I jumped in to see how doing curves at the machine would go, and, well, things went better than expected. So much so that I kept going.

I pin the two centres together...

and then the two ends. Here I run the pin through the pieces twice so that they stay aligned better.

Then, with the pie-shaped piece on top, I give the pieces a gentle tug and slowly work my way around the arc. Having a quarter inch guide on my machine is a huge help but even if you don't have one, just take your time, gently easing the two pieces as you go; keeping your needle in the down position helps too in case you pause along the way.

I tried using two additional pins at the quarter way marks but found that I was creating tiny little divots at those points, so I dropped back to three pins and let the fabric bias do the work.

Everything is pressed to the outer ring. If I knew the final layout I would alternate the way that they are pressed to help with the seams nesting, but I don't.

I started out thinking that I would get all of the square-in-a-square blocks together and move on from there but got itchy to see how my fabrics were going to look together.

In no time I had moved on to this...

and then this. I LOVE IT! It looks like a huge collection of old china to me. It also looks like I have done much more work than I really have because none of those curved corner pieces are sewn to the block centres yet - I've just laid things out on the design wall - so the circles will eventually be narrower than they are right now. Apologies for the bat cave lighting.

I keep moving things around as I go and wonder if I am over thinking things at this stage, but for now I'm happy to see this mosaic come to life, and much faster than if I had done it by hand. Fear not, there will be another hand stitching project that my little bee bag will be suited to....M