Bee Sewcial, Updates

I've been merrily making blocks for my wonderful online bee, Bee Sewcial, posting them on instagram and then forgetting to blog them. OOPS. Here's a summary of the blocks I've made this year. (January is blogged here).

February's prompt, "Eyes", was from Karen Capitola Quilter. I kept one block mostly linear:

And the other embraced the curves.

Both blocks were pieced improvisationally.

My prompt was for March and you can read about it here - I've received some wonderful blocks that are awaiting my assembly inspiration.

April flowers were on order from Marci (Marci Girl Designs). The brights against navy are so wonderful, aren't they?

Here are some close ups:

May was Silvia A Stranger View's month, and her prompt was all about bones and structures in lighter greys with a pop of certain select colours. I tried a 3D effect for one block and it turned out great (if I do say so myself):

The other block was intended to mimic vertebrae, and some improv piecing including the curves really worked out well.

Next up, we had June and M-R Quilt Matters' prompt Group Hug, encouraging or inspirational graffiti. I have to say, I absolutely adore the creativity and inspiration that goes into the Bee Sewcial prompts month after month after month. 

Both blocks were made improvisationally (of course). I cut the pieces for the letters out of leftover bits from another quilt and they were already pieced so they ended up being cross-cut. I found the final effect in the words quite interesting.

And finally (thus far), was Debbie A Quilter's Table's turn. July was about "looking up" in greyscale. I chose the view of the ceiling at the pool that I see when I'm doing my backstroke. Lucky me that it was already in greyscale!

Here is my block, with a more head-on view than the angled photo.

Whew! That was a lot! Stay tuned for some other updates: The Canadian Sampler blocks, plus some end of the year teacher gifts too.

Winter is Finished!

That title is true in more ways than one! Winter - the season - is finally done here in my part of the world. But more importantly, my first Bee Sewcial quilt, Winter, is also done!

This quilt is a collaboration quilt - all of my Bee Sewcial partners contributed one large or two smaller blocks to this quilt. If you look at this blog post, you'll see my original prompt, where I asked them to make minimalist winter landscape blocks using shades of grey with white. I took the blocks, puzzled them together and then fretted about the quilting.

I won't bore you with the long list of Finish Along quarters that this beauty showed up on my Goals list. Suffice it to say that the top has been assembled since late 2015, I believe.

For the quilting, I marked a couple of the lines, and then eyeballed some walking foot quilting in more or less equal intervals, keeping some parallel and others in wavy points. I used Aurifil 50 weight in a light grey colour (2600).

I actually bound the whole thing and then decided it needed more quilting so out came the 12 weight cotton thread in the same colour. My hands weren't happy with that thick thread but I love the effect! I might even add some more but I needed to call this one done after so long.

I have my sisters in creativity, the Bee Sewcial group, to thank for this amazing finish. Every month, I am in awe of their skill and creativity. How lucky am I to be inspired and challenged by these amazing women!

This is a Finish Along finish as well! Hooray! No more putting it on my list! Wheee!

Bee Sewcial March Prompt

Hello Bee Sewcial friends and #inspiredbybeesewcial friends! My inspiration for this month's theme originates in the packaging for some coffee we bought last year. The colours of the bag really spoke to me and I kept that bag perched beside my laptop for months knowing I'd use it for Bee Sewcial.

For March's blocks, please let yourselves be inspired by the following words:

• waves
• depths
• flow (I think my yoga classes are affecting me ha ha)

For the block's composition, I'm okay with anything except embellishments. Curves, straight lines, appliqué, whatever strikes your fancy.

Orientation is up to you as is size as long as your block/s is/are the equivalent of two 12½" blocks. I absolutely love the process of puzzling together blocks into a top, so don't worry about odd dimensions.

As for the colourway, I'd like you to again be inspired by the packaging's colours. For proportions, please focus on the darker hues (teals), using a lighter touch for the lighter colours (greens) and the copper colour as an accent.

For your reference, I've included my older Kona colour card in the photo (ignore the circled colours). The darker colour in the packaging seems to match Kona Glacier pretty well - you can see that in the photo background. But anything in that family of darker blue-greens/teals would be great. The greens appear to be in the Palm/Laurel/Leaf range. As for the copper colour, my card suggests Brick, Cocoa or Spice. Again, all of these colours are guidelines only to help with choosing colour families. They don't have to be Kona solids or those specific colours.

I so look forward to seeing how you interpret the vision!

Bee Sewcial, January

My fantastic Bee, Bee Sewcial, has just kicked off its third year. I absolutely love creating with these amazing women.

January's prompt was from Stephanie Spontaneous Threads: RESOLUTION. Inspired by the colours in this incredible video, we were to interpret the theme in whatever way resonated with us. Since I don't make resolutions for the new year or any other time - it's just a thing of mine - I instead used the opportunity to express some of my upset about the current political climate. On edge, shattered, brittle.

I will find some resolve, I'm sure, but for now I'm still dealing with some very raw emotions.

Bee Sewcial 2016 Wrap Up

November's Bee Sewcial blocks for Leanne she can quilt closed out another year of incredible collaboration, creativity and challenge.

Leanne asked for "maximalist" circles (ie the opposite of minimalist). My block - which came out at something like 13"x16" (can't recall and didn't take note) - was hugely inspiring, as you'll see in a later post. For now, though, here it is:

I referenced this tutorial by Marianne Haak of The Quilting Edge to create my improv bull's eye. I LOVE it! 

And just like that, the 2016 Bee Sewcial year is done! I created a lot of cool stuff based on the monthly prompts, and learned a ton too:

The 10 members of Bee Sewcial share our progress and work on Instagram - look for the #beesewcial hashtag, and please feel free to follow along using #inspiredbybeesewcial as we head into 2017 and a third year of creating.

I intend to finish both of my quilts from this bee in the coming year, hopefully even in Q1. Stay tuned!

Serendipity: A Bee Sewcial Swap Mini

Last year at QuiltCon, my Bee Sewcial group and I met up and during our lunch we talked about organizing a swap. Given that our group is a bunch of over-achieving doctors, lawyers, university professors etc., stuff gets DONE. This swap was no exception.

We were to make an approximately 15"x20" mini quilt top featuring one accent colour of our choice paired with a scrappy low-volume background. Then we were to cut it apart into roughly 5" bits, send 10 of them to the other swap participants and keep two for ourselves.

My accent colour was yellow. I started with this piece:

Then chopped it up and ended up with these:

Whenever I'm not sure what project to work on next, I look at my Finish Along List. Well lo and behold, wouldn't you know this mini was on my Q4 Finish Along Goal List so I puzzled it together and pieced it in one day. Amazingly, it only required two small strips of additional low volume fabric to bring the blocks together into a rectangle shape.

Because it is small - about 15"x19", I was able to quilt and bind it the next day:

I call this Serendipity because it surprised me with how easily it came together, and because it makes me so very happy.

My heartfelt thanks to Leanne, Stephanie, Hillary, M-R, Melissa, Marci Anne, Kari, Karen and Debbie for your contributions!

Bee Sewcial Catch-Up

So Bee Sewcial is chugging along, and while I've done most of my sharing on Instagram (@felicityquilts), I do want to make sure to record my activities here for posterity.

July's blocks were for Debbie A Quilter's Table. "The Bacon Consideration" prompt was fitting given her blog name. I dove into my rusty reds, browns and creams for this one and had fun with some fluid improv waves. I purposely made one block have more "fat" on it than the other to add a little realism - not all rashers are full of lean, meaty goodness.

We broke for August, then September's theme was Transitions, and Anne Play-Crafts gave us a beautiful piece of art to inspire us. She also asked for a large rectangular block. This was mine:

Flickr and I had a disagreement about that watermark. Flickr won and that's why it looks this way.

And finally, Kari Quilts for the Making invited us to create an Army of Self-Love, a theme I love. These hourglass shapes are all colours and sizes, meant to celebrate the diversity of our bodies, skin and beings.

I've probably said this before, but every month when I photograph the block(s) before sending them off, I think to myself that I would definitely love a whole quilt just for me made from them.

Speaking of whole quilts just for me, take a look at how beautiful my Lake Country blocks are!

I want to make a couple of more blocks, and then it'll be time for me to piece it. I'm so excited!

Bee-ing Sewcial - June

It's my turn again to have my amazing Bee Sewcial bee mates make some blocks for me. I'm still finishing my quilt from last year (Winter) because I really want to take my time with the quilting.

But here we are at my month once more and once more, I'm in the throes of packing and moving. During my first Bee Sewical month, I was preparing to move out of our townhouse that we'd sold. This time, I'm preparing to move from our rental apartment to our new home, and I couldn't be happier.

In fact, my new community is the inspiration for the Bee Sewcial blocks I'm asking my bee mates to create. Naramata, located in BC's wine country and perched on Okanagan Lake, is absolutely beautiful. I mean, really beautiful.

My inspiration prompt is Lake Country, and these were my directions:

I plan to put together an impressionistic-looking lake/tree/sky quilt, and I want the blocks to feature strips vs. squares. And please have all of the strips oriented in the same direction of your block which can be any size so long as the final size of the block(s) are equivalent of 12"x12" finished.

As for colours, I would like the blocks to be in lake country colours - greens and blues. One colour per block, as shown in my samples:

I'd also like the blocks to have a little less value contrast than the ones I made for my examples. So keep it to medium/dark or medium/light if that makes sense.

If you're sewing along with us, the hashtag is #inspiredbybeesewcial. Check out what my lovely bee mates are working on with #beesewcial.

Bee Sewcial: March and April

March in Bee Sewcial was Hillary's month. We got a photo prompt with the concept of "layers" and a wonderful colour palette. Here are my blocks:

 

And then April came along and we made triangles with a repeating theme for Marci, in blue. I love blue so much. SO MUCH. The first block started out with the triangles both pointing up, but it was missing something. So I flipped one triangle over and that was that. 

Improvisational piecing doesn't have to look messy or random. It can be controlled and measured.

My second block was less controlled and measured. I began with the triangles, then added the strips to bring the block to the desired size of 12½".

Follow Bee Sewcial on Instagram via our hashtag #beesewcial, and participate using #inspiredbybeesewcial.

Bee Sewcial January and February

I re-upped my commitment to Bee Sewcial when Leanne and Stephanie decided to keep it running for another year. I absolutely LOVE the monthly challenges and besides, one of our members (Debbie A Quilter's Table) won First Place in Group Quilts at QuiltCon West with a Bee Sewcial quilt - who wouldn't want to continue in a group like that if they could?

Speaking of QuiltCon, many of us Bee Sewcialites (current and former) met up at QuiltCon, had our photo taken in front of the quilt and had a great lunch together. A QuiltCon highlight for sure.

Now. While my Bee Sewcial participation has been timely, my blogging about it has not been! January flitted by and so did February and well here we are.

Stephanie Spontaneous Threads kicked off January with a prompt about lines and intersections, and chose some of my very very favourite colours - shades of grey + curry + a pop of colour.

 

Then for February, Karen Capitola Quilter had a really cool idea combining form and function and colour ("Stretch Denim (Let's Get Comfortable)") and oh it was great. My first block was kind of typical of me - some improv waves, some chambray.

For Block 2, I waited until the Bee Sewcial ladies could give me an in-person tutorial on insetting shapes into backgrounds. Success! Check out that "hole in my jeans"!

The technique is a combination of the 6 minute circle (you can search it on youtube) and some others and now I know how to do it yaaaaaay!

Bee Sewcial, Year 2

I loved loved loved being part of Bee Sewcial last year, so I stayed on for the second round!

Before I show you what I made for Stephanie Spontaneous Threads this month, here is a mosaic of all of my Bee Sewcial blocks from 2015:

Click through to my Flickr photostream for individual links

2016 kicked off with some of my favourite colours: grey and yellow. Or, more specifically, Kona Medium Grey and Kona Curry. Yum!

The theme was linear and intersections. I didn't intend for both blocks to be so straight and narrow but that's how they evolved. I kind of love them.

More Stuff I Made

My coworker and friend Nicole changed jobs and left our department. As a going away gift, I made her a pillow:

I pieced my grey scraps with a few pops of fuchsia on the front and back:

Quilting is just some wavy lines (in pink thread) done with the walking foot.

This? This, I'm happy with. And so is Nicole, which is really what matters.

Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild repeated a really successful swap where we bring a ziploc baggie full of our own favourite scraps and someone else takes the bag and makes you something. I got a bag full of beautiful solid scraps from Arita, and made her this mini quilt I called Flying South.

I wasn't sure at first how to deal with the scraps but once I got the idea to separate them in to warm and cool colours, inspiration struck. A rule of the swap was that the item you made had to include flying geese, so I used grey flying geese to transition between the two sections.

It's about 18" x 18", and is intentionally wonky in shape and size. Arita appreciates wonky. I had so much fun working with all solids.

For the quilting, I did something different in each secion. A squared off maze design (done free motion) in the "cool" colours, with a cool-toned blue thread:

And a flowery motif in the warm section, with orange thread:

And finally, some straight line quilting with grey thread in the grey section.

I was so happy with how this turned out and I'm really pleased to report that Arita is too.

Recently at work, I needed a testimonial for one of our suppliers and asked the part of my team that used their product to email me a quick blurb. I sweetened the pot because these are busy folks and I wanted to give them an incentive to respond - I said that all submissions would be entered in a draw for something handmade from me. Despite this amazing offer, there was only one response. The "winner" selected a mug rug and when I asked what colours, he said, "How about Canucks colours?" This pattern by Sonja Artisania sprang to mind immediately.

The winner loves it. Yay!

And finally, November's Bee Sewcial blocks for Leanne she can quilt. After two straight months of minimalism, Leanne decided to ask for maximalism - ALL the colours! I love LOVE the theme, and my blocks.

I so enjoyed my Bee Sewcial experience in 2015 that I've decided to stay on for round 2. 

Happy Christmas, everyone - enjoy the holidays!