January & February Quilting Bee Blocks

Thanks so much for all of the kind words about my tie-front tote bags from my last post! Don't forget, there are still a few days to enter for your chance to win a free e-course from Trish Preston of Two Peas in a Pod. Just head over to my post on the Fat Quarterly blog to enter.

I'm sitting in the waiting room of my local Honda dealership waiting for my minivan to have its oil changed, so I figured it was a good time to catch up on some recent quilting bee blocks that I've made.

Over in the Bee Tweet group, January was Rebecca's month and she requested fun little house blocks. I was so happy to see this, because I always love making house blocks. I ended up making two blocks for Rebecca from the fabric she sent. First, a church or schoolhouse:

And second, just a funky little cottage:

Here they both are together. I hope you like them, Rebecca!

I joined a new virtual quilting bee that started in January. It's called the Free Bee and I was invited to join by the fabulous Lynne of Lily's Quilts (and also of Fat Quarterly, of course.) The bee is placing its emphasis on free and improv piecing. Really, how could I refuse?

Krista of Poppyprint kicked us off in January and posted this AMAZING photo as her inspiration. I just fell in love with it -- it has such a modern, faded, beachy driftwood-type feel to it, doesn't it? I'm holding on to this one for future quilt ideas.

Photo courtesy of Ingrid Jansen (wood & wool stool) via Flickr

I had a great time shopping for new fabrics for Krista's quilt, and wound up buying a whole lot more than I needed for just three quilt blocks. So stay tuned .... you're going to see these fabrics again!

Here are the three blocks I made. One large:

And two small:

Can't wait to see Krista's quilt come together!

OK, ready for February? Back over in Bee Tweet, Leigh sent a really great assortment of fun blue and green prints and asked for quarter log cabin blocks inspired by Nettie's Square Deal quilt from the Block Party book.

First, I made one 13" block that I chopped down into 4 - 6.5" square blocks:

Then I made one other large 12.5" block ...

... and two more small 6.5' blocks.

As you can tell by the number of blocks I made for Leigh, I had a great time making these!

Things began to get challenging over in the Free Bee in February. The group is chock full of some amazing artists and quilters -- and I use those two terms together, because the bee sometimes drifts closer to the realm of art quilts than I've even been comfortable with before.

Case in point: for February, Marianne requested urban industrial blocks inspired by the work of art quilter Elizabeth Barton (here's a gallery that Marianne set up, and here's another set of urban inspirational photos). Gorgeous, for sure, but how could I pull this off? Elizabeth's work is a far cry from what I am used to making. But that's what I love about this bee -- the opportunity to push myself into new areas of creativity that I haven't tapped into before.

I was drawn to this photo that Marianne took inside the Montreal metro, and took my inspiration from it:

Here's what I created:

I went heavy on the texture with some Moda Cross-weave fabric in grey and tried to add some urban grit by adding in Grunge solids in yellow and orange. I attempted to give the block some dimension and, for fun, stitched on a few hexagons to represent industrial cogs.

You should definitely check out the other blocks that people are making for Marianne -- I'm truly blown away by the skill and creativity in this group. And wait until you see what I need to make for this bee in March ... eeeeek!

October & November Quilting Bee Blocks

I've been working on getting a bunch of new things finished up and should be able to get some pictures posted soon, but in the meantime I thought I'd catch up on sharing some quilting bee blocks that I made in late 2011.

October was my last month in the do. Good Stitches charity bee. We made string x-blocks using this tutorial with bright modern scraps for the center part of each block, and any shade of grey for the background. I had a great time raiding my scrap bin for these blocks and, when all was said and done, I wound up making seven!

I had a bit of a panic attack when Amisha requested hexagons for her blocks from members of the Bee Tweet group, inspired by Rashida's quilt from the Block Party book. I had only tried making hexagons once before, for Tacha in the bee inspired quilting bee back in 2009. Let's just say that hand piecing was not my thing, and I vowed never to attempt English paper piecing again.

Lucky for me, Amisha didn't care how we made our hexagons, as long as we just made them! So, while I was at the Triangle Modern Quilting Guild retreat at Wrightsville Beach NC last fall, I cooked up my own way of completing the task. I used cardboard templates to cut and fold under the edges of the blocks, pressed the hexagons liberally, adhered the hexagons to the background fabric using fusible interfacing, and topstitched around all of the edges. I actually kind of loved making them, once I devised my own strategy to get them done. I also LOVED Amisha's palette -- Habitat prints by Jay McCarroll against a background of Moda Cross-weave in Natural.

With my group in the do. Good Stitches officially done, my only November bee commitment was for Bee Tweet. Jen (aka bettycrockerass, my favorite Twitter handle ever!) sent us all a kind of super awesome holiday assortment that wasn't red and green and traditional, but very hip and retro cool. Here's what I came up with:

Modern and improv-y log cabin variations -- my favorite kind of block.

As you can see, my quilting bee commitments slowed down towards the end of 2011, but 2012 is a new year with some new groups that I'll be playing with! Along with the continuation of Bee Tweet, here are a few new groups I'll be sewing for:

• Free Bee -- led by the always fabulous Lynne from Lily's Quilts, this group is filled with an eclectic bunch of modern quilters with an emphasis on free piecing.
• The Bee Bee -- I'm very excited about the row robin bee, where we'll all be sewing with one of my most favorite fabric lines: Melody Miller's Ruby Star Spring. (Note: The Bee Bee got its name from that fabulous large cross-stitched bee print!)
• The Traveling Quilts -- I've teamed up with my PIC (partner-in-crime) Heather to start this new group, which is kind of a new concept in virtual quilting bees. I think it's going to be GREAT (and with the likes of Jacquie, Ashley, Alissa, Monica, Amber, Elizabeth, Faith, Penny, and Kerri taking part, how can it not be??) I'm sure I'll be posting more about the Traveling Quilts in an upcoming post.

So what does that mean? Lots of great more monthly sewing (and monthly sewing posts) in 2012!

August & September Quilting Bee Blocks

It's been a while since I blogged about the bee blocks I've been making over the past couple of months. October's will be posted soon -- I'm still working on hand sewing some hexagons, which isn't really my forte -- but in the meantime, let's catch up on August & September!

August was Amy's month in the Bee Tweet group, and she helped us all get into the holiday spirit a bit early by requesting Christmas-themed blocks. One of the ideas on Amy's wish list for a block was little Christmas houses, and I was more than happy to oblige:

The August block for the Comfort circle over in the do. Good Stitches charity bee was the Greek Cross block, made in blues, greens, and greys. Here are the two I made:

Back in the Bee Tweet group, Rachel sent out her stash of Bliss and requested log cabin / square-in-square blocks -- my favorite! I was able to make two blocks for Rachel, though the second block is shy just one log on the bottom to make it square:

And finally, Jennifer coordinated September's do. Good Stitches quilt and requested blocks made from Alissa's fantastic tutorial for July in the Modern Block of the Month, found on Sew Mama Sew! Because Jennifer was making two small quilts -- one for a boy and one for a girl -- she requested one block in pink, orange, and yellow, and the other in blue, green, and grey:

These blocks look really warped in the photo, but I promise they were straight and square!

Have you guys been having fun in your quilting bees lately?

June Quilting Bee Blocks

June was an interesting sewing month for me, as I tried to figure out everything I needed to finish before packing away all of my fabric and sewing materials into boxes -- which, as of the time of this writing -- are still not yet unpacked.

Luckily, I was able to squeeze in my quilting bee commitments for the month before moving.

First, Darci asked for wonky star blocks for her month in the Bee Tweet bee, made from some cuts of Kona Grass and an assortment of bright scraps -- including some precious cuts of Heather Ross' Far Far Away II, which Darci asked us to use as the star centers.

I was able to make 2 blocks for Darci, and used a square from Modern Workshop by oliver + s as the center of the block on the left:

Over in the do.Good Stitches charity bee, Jenn asked for triangular log cabin blocks inspired by this quilt (fantastic quilt, BTW -- you should really click over to check it out!)

Keeping with Jenn's requested orange + aqua color scheme, I first made these blocks ...

... which look great, but weren't yet cut to size when I took the picture. After trimming them down, I was afraid that the outer border was waaaaay too narrow and in danger of getting lost in the seam allowance, so I made two more:

And I felt much better about sending them along.

On to July, and I'm a bit worried about finishing my blocks for the month, what with all of the aforementioned unopened boxes and all.

May Quilting Bee Blocks

I don't usually venture into circular territory, but the do. Good Stitches quilting bee has been pushing me into somewhat uncomfortable territory the past few months. And I think that's a good thing.

I made these 5 striped circle blocks to help Angela realize her vision for her charity quilt. I followed her tutorial which (quite cleverly) results in these CD-sized blocks having the sticky side of some fusible interfacing exposed on the back. Angela's going to fuse all of these circles onto a solid background for a fabulous quilt inspired by Kristen's.

May was the kick-off month in the Bee Tweet bee, and Erin asked us for colorful scrappy blocks in kind of a 5-sided log cabin style (loosely based on Aneela's block tutorial). I had a lot of fun playing with some of my favorite scraps here without too much thought of matching or coordinating. This block finished out HUGE -- about 17.5" square -- and I'm so excited to see how Erin's quilt turns out.

I expect someone will ask, so I hunted down a link to the fox fabric that I used in the center of my block here. It's called "Flora Fox" from Farbenmix, and I got mine as a present from the ever-fabulous Katy.