My turn for bee blocks!

September was my turn for the Sew Buzzy Bee.  I had to design my quilt, pick out and cut up fabrics to send out and then wait not so patiently while they came in.  I'm waiting for one more set of blocks coming all the way from England, so I won't show you the blocks from my fellow bee members quite yet.

But!  I can show a lot of the process that got this quilt in motion.

First, I spent hours combing through quilting blogs and flickr groups to decide what I'd like to start with.  Here is my inspiration quilt.  I think it is a perfect way to allow my fellow bee members room for creativity, and for me to get blocks that I wouldn't have expected.

Then I had to pick fabrics.  I love color so much, that I had a really hard time weeding out different shades that I didn't want to use.  (I had a stack of red fabrics and a stack of white background fabrics that I rejected for the final draft.)  I took pictures of these fabrics on top of 4 different fabrics, and I sent those photos to three trusted friends to get extra opinions before deciding on a background fabric.  Finally, I settled on Kona cottom medium gray.

After cutting up the chunks of fabric to send out, I decided to try a few blocks in order to test out the tutorials.  I liked the blocks so much, that I had to stop so I could let my bee members have room to create.  I knew I'd have to make a number of blocks myself to finish the quilt.

I started putting the finished blocks up on my wall two days ago, and now I've sashed and sewn together four blocks.  It looks so cool that I almost can't wait to show you!

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