Quilting Bee Round Up

So, last year I joined quite a few online quilting bees. 3 to be exact. That might not see like many, and at the time, it didn't strike me as that overwhelming, but for some reason, I was always dragging a little behind in sending my blocks back, especially as time went by. Plus, after the first few months, I pretty much gave up on blogging about them. So again, I apologize for my epic laziness! Since I finally sent my last blocks back last month, and I plan on starting to blog more, quilting-wise, I thought I would post one giant update with all the bee blocks I made in the last 18 months. Are you ready? :)


The Modern Tradition Quilt Bee
This is the first bee I joined, and I think the one that lost the most people along the way. :) Oh well! Life happens. 


Log Cabin Blocks for Leanne (February)



Grandma's Flower Garden Blocks for Lesly (March)



Arkansas Crossroads Blocks for Greta (April)



Tulip Block for Norma (May)



Starflower Block for Sherri (June)



Star Block for Lydia (July)



Quatrefoil Block for Rebecca aka Reebecki, my RL friend! (August)



Churn Dash Blocks for Heather (September)



Buzz Saw Block for ME! :D (November)

You'll see many more of these! I'm still waiting on a few, but I have received most of them, and have picked out the sashing, and plan to sew them all up at our annual retreat in September.




A Spider Bee
This was the second quilting bee I joined, and we all did the same pattern when it was our turn (for the most part), and just varied the color. I got REALLY good at these blocks, and still love them!


Flowered centers and bright florals for Brioni (February)



Brown centers and foresty colors for Theresa (March)



Purple centers and green and purple batiks for Tracy (April)



Now for something completely different for Becca! :) (May)



White centers and orange and pink strips for Greta (June)



White centers and peach and green strips for Suzy (July)



Surprise blocks for Heidi, who had a baby boy! (September)



Blue centers with white frames and pink and green strips for Sudi-Laura (November)



Maroon Striped centers and rich stripes for ME! :) (December)





Bee Liberated
This is the last bee I joined last year, and we started this one in May. This one was particularly focused on Gwen Marston's Liberated Patchwork, and was a lot of fun to participate in.


Slashed Nine-Patch Blocks for Dena (May)



Liberated Baskets for Kimber (June)



Owly Liberated Log Cabin Blocks for Susan (July)



Liberated Log Cabin Blocks for Jessica (August)



XO Blocks for Jill (September) 


Liberated Star and Friends for Joan (November)
   


Liberated Log Cabin Blocks for ME! :) (January)



Liberated Quarter Log Cabin Blocks for Heidi (March)



Kathy's Blocks for Krista (April)



Free-pieced word block for Wendy (May)





And one more set of blocks...
My friend Rebecca was in another bee last year, and she let me make a few liberated stars for her quilt. :) They were fun!
 




So that's it! You should be seeing my completed quilts in the next few months hopefully. :)

Play With Your Blocks: Watermelon!

Yesterday, I went with my mom & aunt to a class by Sandy Bonsib, a friend and fantastic quilt teacher. This is from her brand new series of classes/patterns called Play With Your Blocks. The concept is this: before every class, Sandy sends you a black and white layout diagram of the blocks and setting for the quilt, and you get to color in and design, but with value and color, your own quilt using those blocks. Each quilt will only have 1 kind of block in it, which will really showcase the versatility of block - quilts will look different based on the color and value placement. For this first class, Sandy used a quarter square triangle block. Ahead of time, she sent us a picture of her top, and told us she used 2 different colors of mediums (grey and gold) and a light (light grey/cream). For mine, I decided to use greens and pinks along with some white background cute prints. :) It reminds me of watermelon candy.

I could set them any way I like - into stars, square, lines, zig-zags. I decided to stick with the layout Sandy used with these, as I thought it was fun and whimsical - there will be multiple rows of pinwheels. In the column on the left, you can see the pinwheels in the contrast between pinks and greens. In the middle column, you can see a white pinwheel on a medium value background, and then in the right column, you can see a pink and green pinwheel on the light background. This isn't the whole quilt - in the end, it will be 10 blocks by 12 blocks - but you can see the concept, I hope!

In other exciting news, I have some new additions to my fabric stash - Munki Munki pajamas by Heather Ross! I finally broke down a few weeks ago and bought some of these adorable fabrics on Etsy. I had been to so many TJ Maxx and Marshall's stores looking for them, and hadn't had any luck.


Wouldn't you know, the SAME DAY I got these in the mail, I decided to head up and check a Marshall's north of my work, and not only did I find the sushi print pants, but a whole pajama set of the aliens, my favorite print of the whole line!!


I was so excited, I literally gasped, and had to contain myself from jumping around the store and squealing in delight! My only dilemma now is that these are actually in my size. I will definitely cut up the top to use in quilts, but I am tempted to use the bottoms as actual pajamas. Hmm... we shall see!

Modern Tradition Blocks: for Melissa

On Thursday night, I finished Melissa's blocks for my Modern Tradition Quilt Bee. These take some time to make because there are lots of seams, but they are much fun! I can't wait to see all of Melissa's blocks together - they are so much fun!

Next up: Leanne's blocks for February: Log Cabin! We are having a sew-in next Sunday at our house, so I'll probably work on those then. Maybe February's blocks from Flossybossy in the UK for A Spider Bee will have come, too!

Modern Tradition: Test block for Melissa

Melissa picked this cool block for our first month at the Modern Tradition Quilt Bee, and here is my test block in my colors for my sampler quilt. :) Yay! I love the way it came out, and I love these fabrics. :) I'm so excited, and can't wait to to make Melissa's blocks for her.

grey | blue | red

Aren't these colors fabulous? I've made a red/white/black/grey/aqua quilt before, but I've really been wanting to do a quilt with grey and this sky blue, with bits of white and red. I'm planning on it being way calmer than I might normally make. The reds will be minimal, most likely.

Right now, I planning on doing the center of my round robin in these colors. Also, though, I'm planning on using this color palette to make an extra block each month from my Modern Tradition Quilt Bee. At the end of the year, I'll have twelve blocks of various sizes that I can put together and remind me of the year! Yay! :) I dug through my stash tonight and pulled out everything that could work. I don't actually have that many sky blues - I normally gravitate towards brighter or more greeny blues. Uh oh! I might have to get a few more. :P



I'm hoping to start making quilt bee blocks this week, both one for me and 2 for Melissa. I figured I can make the one for me first, to make sure it comes out right, and then Melissa's will be perfect. :)

A Spider Bee blocks - for Anna!

I'm in 2 different quilting bees this year, and I am super excited about them! This first bee I am in is A Spider Bee. Everyone in this group will be doing these cool Spiderweb blocks - what will make them different will be the color palettes and settings.



January's blocks are for Anna. For hers, Anna send us the center kites (a tea-stained muslin), as well as a selection of random scraps. She asked us to add scraps of ours to what she sent and put them together, anything-goes style. It was super fun! :) I can tell these are going to be addictive, and I'm looking forward to doing more every month!

More green tumblers

Yesterday, I sat down and trimmed up the rest of the tumblers blocks I had and finally counted them. Turns out I have 234, and I only need 240! Yay! Only 6 more needed! Although that is quite frightening, because that means I actually own over 200 fabrics. Eek!

Now, I'm setting up my machine so I can work on my block exchange from this past fall. Only millions of tiny half square triangles to go!

Quilting Retreat

Long time, no post! Life has been busy for here - since my last post, I have been to Disneyland with my family, to our winter quilting retreat, and have celebrated Christmas!  I'll be posting more in the new year to keep people updated on the quilting bees I am in, so before that all starts, I wanted to update you all on the stuff I got done at our quilt retreat.

Our annual quilt retreat with our whole group is in September in Poulsbo, but we do a smaller one (6 of us instead of 8) in December as well. We normally go to Langley for our winter retreat, but had to move it to Poulsbo this year as Quilting by the Sea in Langley was closing. Luckily, someone bought the shop, so we can go back there again next winter!  Poulsbo is a great place to be in the fall, but all the walking makes it difficult in December.

Here are some of the projects I worked on:

Candy Garden - This is from a class I took with Sandy Bonsib. I love this one!


I put this little guy together from scraps from Candy Garden. I don't know if I like it, though. :| Oh well.


This was based of a challenge fabric our sewing group was given - the chocolate cakes and candies in the middle of the blocks.


This is the back I pieced for my Candy Candy quilt - it's at the quilter's now! :)


Tumbly Greens - I'm working on this charm quilt as a surprise gift for someone! So far, I have about 150-200 blocks cut out. I need to finish trimming them to size and count them. But yeah. That's a lot of blocks. I also own A LOT of green fabric. :)