- May 11, 2021

Color of the Year

FREE EMBROIDERY DESIGN "Bee You"

Yellow and grey tones - two independent colors that highlight how different elements come together to support one another, best express the mood for the Color of the Year 2021.

What colors do you have plenty of in your fabric stash, and what colors do you seem to lack? For me, yellow is definitely a color I don't use too often in my projects. I am actually not sure why.. it is fun and happy and there are so many wonderful shades and tones of yellow...

When Riley Blake Designs put together the 2021 Color of the Year fabric bundle - I knew I wanted to to sew with these gorgeous Confetti Cotton solids. What I didn't know is how they would INSPIRE me so greatly! I love everything about these little projects! Scroll to the bottom of this blog for the complete list of RBD 2021 Color of the Year fabrics.

I started off by piecing the Vintage Exploding Star Mini Quilt pattern in these scrappy yellow and grey tones. This is one of my most popular mini quilt patterns and I love how striking it turned out using the Charcoal for the background. I used the rest of the bundle for the scrappy quilt. In place of the center 9-patch I designed a "Bee You" machine embroidery file which is really what 2021 means to me! I would love to share this file with you for FREE. All you have to do is click the link HERE and grab the files. Use the code "BEEYOU" at checkout and the machine embroidery files will be FREE! All the files are there for you to use on your domestic home embroidery machine.

If you don't have an embroidery machine, you can still make up this mini quilt and make it with the original little 9-patch inside. If you use the code "2021" at checkout, the Exploding Star Mini Quilt Pattern will be 50% off for all of 2021!!! YAY!

After I sewed the Vintage Exploding Star Mini Quilt together, I wanted to accent the exploding stars... and decided to outline them with a running hand stitch and some yellow pearl cotton thread. I quilted the quilt on my domestic sewing machine with echo line stitching in both black or yellow top-stitch thread. I love how it gives the quilt a subtle feeling of movement and vibration.

Of course I could not sew with these colors without making up some Little Friends Bee Dolls! I made one bee in each of the 4 colorways. If you haven't picked up a bundle of the 2021 Color of the Year RBD fabrics, I would highly recommend it! Even if these are not your regular color palette, what a great way to "Bee You" and lift each other up in 2021!