I decided to participate in the Bee Hive online quilting bee again this year, and so far it has been a lot of fun. I was the Queen Bee for January for the #IGHoneyBees2018 and blogged about it in my January ‘18 Queen Bee Blocks post. Since that post, I have received all of my blocks from my swarm members and need to make a few more blocks, so I can sew a 48” by 60” quilt top together. That is the size of my Quatrefoil Quilt that has blocks sewn by Bee Hive and Stash Bee swarm members in 2016, and it is a wonderful throw-size quilt that is currently displayed on a quilt ladder. I absolutely love this quilt—one of my all-time favorites.
Meredith, of Whats Next Ma was our February Queen Bee, and she chose the Houndstooth Block in scrappy red and navy blue. Because there were only 10 fabrics needed and required either strips or squares, this block went together fast. I had never made this block before and really enjoyed the quick paper-piecing that makes the blocks so precise. I treated myself to a few new fabrics for this block and especially love the red cross-stitch hearts with needle and thread fabric.
Our Queen Bee for March is Jan of Cocoa Quilts, and she chose the Ripple Block which was a lovely block to make with Jan’s choices of scrappy spring and low volume fabrics. I tried to reduce the wonkiness factor when working with so many small squares and HSTs by using Best Press when I ironed my fabric prior to cutting, and I think that helped some. I have a love/hate relationship with scrappy blocks that require a lot of different pieces. For Jan’s block I used 48 different fabrics plus Kona white, and it was fun to run across scraps of fabric from past projects. But for me, scrappy blocks can take a lot more time to make than blocks with just a few fabrics. I think part of the reason that fabric selection for scrappy blocks takes me so long is the way I store my scraps. I don’t have dedicated scrap bins, and I store scraps of fabric folded inside larger pieces of the same fabric. Mostly it works well for me. I do have one short cut for scrappy block fabric selection and that is having two charm packs dedicated to scrappy blocks. Right now I have partial charm packs of Karen Lewis’ Blueberry Park and Kate Spain’s Canyon collections. I’m planning to buy two more charm packs for this purpose: Christa Watson’s Modern Marks and Rebecca Bryan’s Panache collections. My absolute favorite fabric used in this block (see below) is the Therapy low volume fabric that my sister and I designed together. Through an internet search, I gathered open-ended questions used by therapists in sessions and wrote a few myself, and my sister did the graphic design and had it printed up through Spoonflower.
I’m wondering what works best for you as far as storing fabric scraps?
Linking up to Cooking Up Quilts: Main Crush Monday.
