The 'bee inspired' bee was started by Rachel of p.s. i quilt in 2009.
We were 18 participants from all over the world. This was my first virtual quilting bee ever and I was happily challenged on both methods and colours as the year passed by. I found out that making blocks to other people with their choice of fabric and block pattern could really make me break a sweat, as I was quite nevous to make their blocks as good as I should/could/would. A very healthy exercise!
For my month, I sent out all of my red and white/cream scraps and requested minimum one wonky star from my fellow 17 participants, size max 12 ½''. They could add scraps of their own if they followed my colourway.
So from out of these piles
came THIS:
I am totally in love! I love the scrappy, yet controlled look, the random placement of the stars, the different sizes of all these stars - have you noticed the teeny tiny ones??A close-up of one of the stars and the quilting in it:
For the quilting, this was an (almost) first dance with my brand new Bernina 820 (Yeeeeeeehaaaaaaww). I will not gloat any more about it in this post, promise! I am just very happy with it, let me put it so.I have freehand quilted around each star and a spiral in the middle of almoset every one of them. the rest has been filled with doodling, which I found to be fast and quite funny to quilt. Here is a close-up of the back for you to see what I meen:
It was just plain fun to freehand quilt this quilt, as I found that the wonly theme allowed for wonkiness in the quilting itself, which freed me from much of my self-imposed pressure to do thing nice and neat.I have used 100% bamboo batting, and it is oh so soft and it creates a very nice texture. Not my last time to use this, that is for certain!
Around the borders I chose to freehand quilt information about the bee in handwriting:
(intended for much use and cuddling).It also contains my name and year of finish, block name, made from scraps and so on. this way I avoided making a label, which I must admit I never get to make :)
Thank you to all you folks out there who made this quilt possible! And I know you had to wait 2 years to see it, but hey - I finally made it. I cannot wait for December when it is envisioned on the couch with me of my bf or our son cuddling underneath it!!!
