Friday 31 March 2017

Star Bee Quilt.

Today Jen of Glinda quilts tells us about the quilt she made for Siblings Together from blocks made by the ladies of a quilting bee.

This is my 3rd year supporting the great work of this charity - and being part of a wonderful 'online' Quilt Bee. Each month - mine was January - the Queen Bee decides on a block and the other bees make it, send it to you and you make the quilt from them.

For the tutorial of my block, please see this post:


A simple design and I just asked the bees to make scrappy blocks in red, yellow, green, orange or blue. A big block - unfinished at 18.5" - and with 12 of us in the Bee, it was always going to finish a good size. Bridgid from Australia joins in too so when she and one of the bees sent me two blocks and a newbie follower on IG asked if she could make me one too, I ended up with 16! Aren't they all fabby?



I went to Simply Solids last week for a free motion quilting class with Charlo from Quiltification (what a small world; she's in the other Siblings Together Quilt Bee) and whilst I'm very comfortable and competent in stippling, the class gave me the confidence to try 'new shapes' and I immediately put it to use on this quilt:


And here it is in all its glory yesterday in the morning sunshine in Wales - finishing at 72" square, I think it will make a great quilt for an older child:


I kept the backing gender neutral - a fabby bargain from Fabric Guild - beautiful fabric and I also used the off cuts for the binding:



LOVE IT. 



Thank you to all the kind and talented bees for their beautiful blocks.