CRAFTY | AN AUSSIE MODERN INSTABEE

After the thrills and spills of last year’s Canberra Quilters Annual Members Exhibition I was left feeling a little flat in the sewing department.  Over the past 6 months I’ve sewn some great stuff, but it hasn’t really gotten me excited (with the exception of the Calamine Lotion Swoon).  It’s been great to be learning new things and trying new sewing adventures but I’ve missed the thrill that comes with getting a new block and seeing it come to life with fabric selection.

Lindsay Conner has released a book, “Modern Bee: 13 Quilts to Make with Friends“, and people all over the world are coming together to form Instabees (quilting bees organised on Instagram). A quilting bee is a group of people that come together to create quilts. A virtual quilting bee involves 12 people making agreed upon blocks and swapping them via the postal system. It’s all very exciting!

A couple of weeks ago the most lovely Lisa tagged me in an Instagram callout for people interested in joining an Aussie Instabee.

I was so excited to be asked. I have always wanted to have a go at being in a bee but was a little afraid about whether the quality of my work would be up to bee standards. I thought about it for awhile and thought what the heck, I’ve got nothing to loose and everything to gain, so I said yes.

I never thought it would be just what I needed to get my sewjo back (thanks Cat from Raspberry Rainbow for that wonderful term!).

I waited impatiently for my book to arrive and the minute it hit our letterbox I was devouring it looking for which block I would select as my block. It was a hard call.  There’s so many great blocks in the book.  Our bee has decided that instead of sending each bee member the fabrics to make our blocks we’d all use fabrics we have in our stashes.  This means the blocks will be be scrappy and each member just specifies the colours they’d like.

With this in mind I decided to pick a simple block that I thought could be interesting to make with a little twist that should be easy to accommodate by my hive members.

…painter’s palette quilt block…

I picked the Painters Palette by Megan Bohr (who I didn’t realise when I made the choice is the mastermind behind Canoe Ridge Creations one of my all time favourite quilters).  I figured it would be an easy block for everyone to do and it would also make for an interesting way for me to try a quilting technique I’d been wanting to try for ages; improv piecing.

I have a copy of the book “Sunday Morning Quilts” and there’s a quilt in the book called “Missing U” and it uses an improv block construction. I read up on the block construction and surfed the internet on how to do it and then I just jumped in.

Making these blocks was so much easier now I’ve gone through and sorted out my scrap treasure chest!  Since I started sewing I’ve just been stashing my scraps into this wooden chest… that’s 2 years of scraps!

I use the plastic shoe boxes (thanks @stuffandwhatnot for the tip!) to sort out my scraps by colour which makes it so much easier to find things. (Yep, that’s a baby faced Paul Kelly and a dapple lit Jensen Ackles on my wall! Sewing room beefcake! Beeeeeffffffcaaaaakkkkeeee!)

Anyway, back to the block. I decided that for the the solid colours they would look great as coloured improv blocks instead.

I had so much fun making these 5″ square blocks. I tried to concentrate on getting fabrics in there that read as a solid colour from the distance. (I also had to chuckle that I managed to get some bee’s in there…)

I used these blocks in place of the solid colours in the original block design.  Our hive seems to all want a low volume background so I decided to jump on that bandwagon and go with my own version of low volume. (Which kind of makes sense as I’ve been collecting low volume and text prints for awhile now and I might as well use them instead of hoarding them.)

This is the block I created:

I’m really happy with how it turned out (despite the fact that I hadn’t factored into my improv piecing that the corners would be chopped off and so I was a bit bummed about the placement of some of my pieces of feature fabrics). I’m excited to see how others will interrupt the challenge.

I’m not sure how my quilt will turn out at the end of the 12 months (I suspect a very scrappy version of the Twister game mat!), but I’m excited at the possibilites. The Bee kicks off in March and I’m so excited about it. I’ve gotten such a great block to start with and I’m thrilled to be sewing for some pretty amazing ladies. It’s going to be an adventure… and I love adventures!