Sunday 12 October 2014

Global Scrap Bee - my very first Bee!

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I might have mentioned I found myself in 3 Bee's this year.  Global Scrap Bee has just come to a close and though I am relieved to be down to a more manageable 2 Bee's, I feel a bit sad about the end at the same time.  This was my first Bee and I loved it.
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As an online virtual quilting Bee, we came together through the Plum & June New Bloggers hop from 2013.  There was a bee for US residents and one for those living outside the US who didn't mind paying the postage.  13 of us came together from Canada, Ireland, Germany and Italy on Flickr and signed up for 1 block per month.  In order to keep postage to a minimum, we decided to go with a scrappy theme and use fabric from our own stash and whatever scraps we had on hand.  Quite a few of these blocks were made purely from my scrap basket.
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We were led by our Hive Mama Adrienne from Chezetcook's Modern Quilts.  On the first of every month the Queen Bee got to pick a block and either send a link to a free tutorial or write one for us to follow (we all picked free tutorials!)  Maximum block size was 14" and the requirement was to send 1 block or if you had the time you could make more!
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I think you can see from the variety here we had a great selection of blocks over the course of the year!  From modern rail fence blocks to scrappy stars to paper pieced kaleidoscope blocks.
I had trouble with one block when I got my new sewing machine and discovered my 1/4" foot on my Pfaff was not 1/4"and had to remake this scrappy star  as all of my points would be lost when pieced to the next one (brilliant scrap busting block!)

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The Colorado Beauty block was the one that got the most comments!  The choice of colours for most blocks was left up to the maker but in the case where a rainbow was wanted the Queen Bee for the month listed the colours requested on a discussion page in the Flickr group. We then put our names against the colour we wanted to make.  It was an easy way to not get all blue blocks!

This was my choice for May.  I chose this scrappy star from Clover & Violet with low volume scraps for the background.

When sending blocks, we put up a picture in Flickr and a note on the discussion page for that month to let our Queen Bee know they were on the way.

When they were received, our Queen posted a thank you note.  The ladies in this Bee were fantastic and we had only one drop out across the whole year so our Bee became 12 instead of 13.

It was great fun looking at the finished quilts and spotting your own block in the mix!  
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If any of these blocks catch your eye to make, I have updated my useful links page with links to how I made mine and the original tutorials, except for this last blue block called Urban Chickens which I neglected to put in a blog post.  The tutorial can be found at Wombat quilts here.

All in all this was brilliant Bee to be a part of - thank you ladies!

6 comments:

  1. Ruth, these blocks are so beautiful! I kept thinking as I scrolled through them that all together they would make a fantastic quilt! :) Have you made a quilt from your month of being Queen yet?

    I'm also kicking myself for not joining in either one of the bees or the round robin . . . shoulda woulda coulda ;) The round robin quilts that are being made from the groups from the hop are absolutely amazing.

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  2. All these are beautiful! I have some serious bee envy right now.

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  3. What a lovely post Ruth! I so enjoyed our Bee this past year. It was so great to meet folks from all over the world and there was not one block that I didn't like! I hope you keep having fun in your other Bees :)

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  4. Beautiful blocks, Ruth, and I love your idea of having a resource for links back to the tutorials and what you learned from making each block!

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  5. What a great collection of blocks. It sounds like fun.

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