Bee Sewcial July for Karen

July's theme for Bee Sewcial stumped me at first, like all of the previous months' seem to have.

Karen CapitolaQuilter asked for the design to evoke the concept of Reflections, and let us know that the reflection didn't have to be literal but that one element of the block needed to be reflected somewhere else. SO COOL. A beautiful palette was also really inspiring.

My first block was originally going to be something inspired by Jade Stitch Mischief's quilt for the last Quilt! Knit! Stitch! challenge (modern metallics) featured here. A stand of trees with shadows. Through the design process (and because one of my fellow bee members beat me to the original design), my idea evolved into this:

It's kind of a "business on one side and party on the other"-type situation and I'm cool with that. It's bigger than required, but Karen can trim as she sees fit. I kind of like that the bottom solid bit is thicker than the others.

After I made the first block, I stepped away and thought about block #2. Hillary Entropy Always Wins made a beautiful block that looked like triangles/mountains reflected on water and taking that as my jumping off point, I thought of doing something curvier. I started with the idea of a half-circle and then reflected it with freehand curved bits. I'm really, really happy with how it turned out:

Sunset on the lake, someone said on Instagram, and I agree.

Both blocks ended up similarly sized - around 14" square or so. Bee Sewcial is a bit of a different bee - we don't ask for specific blocks to be made. Rather, each month the Queen Bee shares the theme/feel/inspiration she's looking for and lets us loose to create with a certain colour story. It's a great example of "Improv with Intent" that the Modern Quilt Guild has identified as the approach for the QuiltCon 2016 Charity Quilt Challenge.