BOM celtic quilts

since I've gotten back into quilting, I've jumped on a few Block of the Month series so that i don't feel pressured to get a bunch of blocks done, i can work with different color palettes and styles, and practice a few skills.

This first series caught my eye from Simply 2M.  I love that you can either make these as quilt blocks or mini quilts.  I am doing the latter, so that i can use them on my altar for each month/season/holiday.  Now, since I've been working on other things for these past few months, I am behind on jan-april.  So for this series, i decided to make the April quilt first, so that i could use and display it.  It is a design that celebrates Beltaine--one of the big sabbats--for May 1st.

For this one i tried two different applique techniques.  I did the sew and turn method with the circle, using some iron-on stabilizer.  Note to self--use lightweight fusible interfacing instead!  The triangles, being so small, i just fused as is.  I used a blanket stitch around both.

Now, this bock was a bit of a struggle because i didn't print it up to the proper size, and the center square was a little larger than the instructions.  This involved math, measuring, sewing, cursing, more math, more sewing, and settling.  You may notice that on the row of little squares, the outer squares are a little smaller than the others.

I also got more practice on my free-motion quilting--and as you can see, i need more.  My straight lines echoing the triangles turned out ok, but those durned curves are gonna be the death of me.  I even practiced on scraps before i did this.  The scraps look awesome.  This one looks like i suddenly developed a palsy!  As the design here is the second one (i ripped out the first) i decided to keep it.  I wanted to grace my altar with the most beautiful work, but i realized, that i needed to adorn it with reality.  And reality is, my skills still need work.  So here is my daily reminder.

Notice I've placed Ganesha in the center of that sun.  Perhaps he can help me the next time i tackle curves...