October Bee Blocks

After the whirlwind of the past few weeks (quilt market in Houston! more on that soon ...), I spent this past weekend trying to catch up on some bee commitments. It felt good to knock out some small projects and cross a few things off of the ol' to-do list.

First up is a block for Modern Quilt Guild headmistress and sewist extraordinaire, Alissa (from handmadebyalissa), for our {Bee} Imaginative quilting bee.

She was inspired by this photo of a contemporary woven tapestry seen on Cathy of California's blog, and asked us to interpret this design in our own way to create a rectangular quilt block.


Here is the amazing fabric collection that Alissa pulled together for this project:

And here's what I created:

I had a lot of fun going back to something purely improvisational, making it up as I went along. It was a great way to spend my Friday night. Can't wait to see Alissa's quilt come together!

On the complete other end of the spectrum was a much more traditional, paper-pieced block for Mary over in the Buzz Cuts bee. The funny thing is that I enjoyed making this more traditional block, where accuracy and precision was key, just as much as I enjoyed making Alissa's block. Having made them both in one evening, it was a very cool exercise in contrast, and flexing both sides of my brain!

I am still not very comfortable with my paper piecing skills, but I only had to rip out one seam on this block. I also made a corresponding alternate block that Mary is going to use in her quilt layout:

And here they are both together:

There's lots of good chatter going on right now about virtual quilting bees over in the Quilting Bee Blocks group. For me, I am really enjoying being in 2 bees at the moment ... down significantly from the 6 or 7 I was in at some point over the past year!

How about you? How many bees are you in? How many is too many? And if you're not in a bee yet, what are you waiting for?!