Fab Bee Blocks

thanks for all the love for my map quilt guys!


i'm really happy that i finally blogged it, cause i got to show you all the awesome photos, but also because i have SO MANY THINGS to blog, i need to start getting caught up!


such as bee blocks! i have so many to blog about!


first up, the Fab Bee, which is mostly made up of local people that i knew before the bee started, but also includes a few further away who i've gotten to know since.


Holly was the queen bee for May, and she stuck with neutrals for her block, which i surprised myself by loving! she sent us each a bundle of seven neutral fabrics, along with a teensy bit of solid coloured fabric, one colour for each of us. she also made a pinterest board of neutral quilts that inspired her - i'm sure they'll inspire you too!

remember the "It's Not About Age, It's About Attitude" tote that i made awhile ago? i made it right after i made Holly's block, you can totally see the similarities.





Holly even sent along embroidery floss that matched the accent colour in each of her blocks! she's so amazingly organized! i am less organized though, and didn't manage to get a picture of my signature block after i finished the embroidery...


Barb and Holly were apparently thinking alike, because she planned to do neutrals in June as well! for her block she wanted us to work with stripes, and asked us not to use a ruler for cutting, to just use our scissors. i think some of us were scared!



though most of the fabric that Barb sent were dyed solids, one of them was a neutral print, and i reversed some pieces of it to add a little bit more visual interest to my blocks.



after i finished the one big block, i sewed together all of my leftovers to make her a few littler blocks as well.


Darlene went back and forth, but eventually decided to have us make Stacked Book Blocks, cause they're her favourite. she made a pinterest board full of blocks that she loved (along with a few of her other options), and sent us a big bundle of fabrics that just screamed DARLENE as soon as you opened them!



can you guess which fabrics i added? there were two!

her block felt so simple compared to the others i've done for this bee (such as Cynthia's heart blocks!), so i decided to add a little bit of embroidery as a secret little message for her. i put it on the very top piece of the block, so that she could remove it and put it somewhere else if she liked.



it's very tiny! i used two strands of 50wt(ish) sewing thread to embroider it.



i used a Pilot FriXion pen to draw on my letters, so you can kind of see the white marks it left under my embroidery, hopefully that'll wash out after Darlene finishes the quilt.



Ellen (who doesn't have a blog, amazingly) left her month super open, just asking us to make blocks with an owl, however we wanted. she sent us a bundle of prints along with a navy blue solid for the background, and let us do our own thing. i was originally thinking that i'd paperpiece an owl, perhaps using Sonja's Easy Peeping Owl pattern that i sewed a long time ago, but then Sonja went and did a talk at the August FVMQG meeting, along with her patterns, and a few other people dibsed her owls first!

after i learned that, i thought about drafting my owl paperpiecing pattern, but i let it mull around in my brain for a little bit. then i had a brainstorm! i made up a sample to test my idea (which i'll blog separately, cause i LOVE it!) and then went full force into owl-mania.



after i made the first one, i couldn't stop, and i still had fabric that i hadn't used, so i made two smaller owls as well.


(i used a ton of starch on the eyes, but that'll wash out! that's why they look like they have marks on them, etc)

the owls use a whole list of techniques, which makes me super happy for some reason. they've got half square triangles (HSTs), 3D flying geese, improv curves, a prairie point (also known as a burr or a pinecone), and applique circles. i'm already planning more!



i'm all caught up with this bee, thank goodness, and i received the fabric for the September block from Berene last week. i'm very excited to get going on it!