February is my month for the Bee-autiful Quilting Bee! So, this evening, I prepared everyone's packages and got them ready for mailing. I decided to go kind of theme-y and send red and pink fabric.
Using Valentine-themed fabric is also an excuse for me to say "It says bee, and there's a picture of a bee!" (There isn't really a picture of a bee, but I just can't resist quoting my all-time-favorite episode of The Simpsons.)
I made everyone a little paper bag mailbox with 48 solid fabric strips in red, pinks and mauve . . .
and a bundle of about 20 different print fabric strips, featuring Alexander Henry's Heart to Heart. (Both print and solid strips are 9" long and vary in width between 1.25" and 2.5".)
For the benefit of the bee members, I'm going to summarize how to make the style of blocks that I had in mind. Hopefully it will be of general interest to my other readers!
I started by sewing 16 strip sets with three sort-of-randomly selected solid strips and one print strip. The strips are all cut perfectly straight, but I sewed them together kind of wonky.
Once the strip sets were made, I chopped each one into three wonky slices of varying sizes.
I then sewed sets of three slices together, squaring up the edges (but not into squares) to make 16 block components.
Finally, I sewed the block components together to make two larger blocks. This block ended up being 12.5" x 14".
And this block is 9.5" x 11" I'm hoping the bee-participants can make blocks (or a single block) somewhere between 8" and 15". Ideally the blocks will be squared up to a rectangular shape.
I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone makes!
