{Big} City Girl QAL- Wellington, New Zealand

Welcome to Week 10 of the {Big} City Girl QAL!

The designer for this week is Rachel sharing this block design from Wellington, New Zealand. We were supposed to be in Morocco this week but travel plans got shuffled due to illness and we will be back on track next week!

Rachel is coming to us today as a guest blogger. She writes:

Hi, I’m Rachel. I’m so excited to be joining Aylin and Amy on their Big City Girl QAL. The blocks made so far are really amazing!

I live in New Zealand. For my big city icon I’ve chosen the ‘Beehive’. This crazy shaped building is the Executive Wing of our Parliament Buildings in Wellington. As a school girl I used to walk past the buildings every day. I don’t live in Wellington any more but I still love to visit. I found these photos from a family holiday to Wellington a few years ago…

Parliament Buildings (with two of my children on the steps)

Wellington Harbour looking back towards the city

My Beehive block looks like this…

It’s a simple pieced block. It finishes at a whopping 14”, I wanted to make sure the pieces weren’t too small to piece, and to leave room for a flag pole. You may like to scale it down.

Cutting Instructions:

Row Number	Beehive Strips			Background Strips, NOTE cut 2 strips of the following dimensions for each row.
1	4 “	by	1 ¼”	5 ¾”	by	1 ¼”
2	7 ½”	by	2”	4”	by	2”
3	7”	by	1 ¼”	4 ¼”	by	1 ¼”
4	7 ½”	by	1 ¼”	4”	by	1 ¼”
5	8”	by	1 ¼”	3 ¾”	by	1 ¼”
6	8 ½”	by	1 ¼”	3 ½”	by	1 ¼”
7	9”	by	1 ¼”	3 ¼”	by	1 ¼”
8	9 ½”	by	1 ¼”	3”	by	1 ¼”
9	10 ½”	by	3”	2 ½”	by	3”
TOP (sky)	Cut one piece 14 ½” by 3 ½”
BOTTOM(ground)	Cut one piece 14 ½” by 2 ½”

Step 1: choose your fabrics. I chose blue and green fabrics; they seemed perfect for Wellington with its blue harbour and green hills. For the background I chose a Ledger print from Carolyn Friedlander’s Architextures range, the numbers and ledgers seemed ideal for the background of a parliament building. A newsprint fabric would also be a fun background. Here’s a photo of the fabrics I chose…

Step 2. Decide which fabric is going to go where and cut your fabrics. For the background fabric you need a lot of strips cut at 1¼”, to speed it up I found it easier to cut several 1¼” strips from my fat quarter (you need a total of 54”x1¼”). Lay your fabrics out as you cut them and keep track of which piece goes where.

Step 3. Sew each row and then piece all the rows together.

Step 4. Optional extra…Add a flag and flagpole to the top of the building. I used a dark grey thread to add a 2” high flagpole and to stitch over a little New Zealand flag that I happened to have. You could stitch a rectangle shape to represent the flag.

Thank you for joining us on the Big City Girl QAL!

Thank you Rachel!

Every third week during this QAL there will be a linky party on my blog as well as on Aylin’s blog where you can share your city blocks for a chance to win prizes. You can either follow the tutorials shared by the designers or design your own blocks. Any city themed blocks will qualify. All blocks qualify once only and must be sewn. The final link up will be for the grand prize and those must be finished items (pillows, totes, etc) using the blocks or a quilt top (quilt tops need not be quilted and bound yet).

Thank you to everyone who linked up last time! The lucky winner is:

#3, Katrine.

I hope you will continue to quilt along with us. Here is the updated schedule:

September 1: Aylin from Germany with Berlin and Istanbul
September 8: Alyce – SewBlossomHeart from Japan with Tokyo
September 15: Julianna – Sewing under Rainbow from Poland with Warsaw
September 22: Sil – silort from Brazil with Brasilia
September 29: Sylvie – -Vivie from France with Paris
October 6: Marit – Sy-elsk-lev from Norway with Aalesund
October 13: me from the USA with Boston
October 20: Jane-Quiltjane from Australia with Sydney
October 27: Lotje – Lotje M from The Netherlands with Delft
November 3: Rachel – Wooden Spoon from New Zealand with Wellington
November 10: Annabella-lifesrichpattern from Morocco with Marrakech
November 17: Felicity – Felicity Quilts from Canada with Vancouver
November 24: Karen – Blueberry Park from the UK with London
December 1: Linky Party for the grand finale
December 8: Announce the winner!

Thank you to all of our sponsors of the {Big} City Girl QAL!

Next week, we will travel to Morocco !