far flung bee + project gingham

My very first quilting bee started this month! Some Instagram buddies and I began throwing ideas around a while back, but now we're actually doing it and I'm super stoked. We're calling it the Far Flung Bee because we live all over the globe, and there's six of us so we'll each be making two blocks a month, for six months. Cool, eh?

broken dishes bee blocks

Here's a post by Elizabeth Hartman that explains virtual quilting bees in case you aren't all that familiar with them. I came up with a bit of a twist for ours, though. We each chose the type of block we wanted, but instead of one person having all twelve blocks made for them in one month, we each make two and receive two. So this month I made two broken dishes blocks for Deb and I'll receive two wonky house blocks from Essie. The last month of the bee each member makes two blocks for themselves.

swap charms on left, my picks on right

To make Deb's broken dishes blocks, I pulled four bright prints from my stash and four gray charms from the stack I received through the Neutral and Solids Charm Swap hosted by Annaliese @The Pewter Acorn. This was my first charm swap, and I chose to send a teal bella solid and a slate/white crosshatch (both on right) that I picked up from my LQS.

mom's old riccar

As for Project Gingham, it's been a bit of a struggle. I kind of rushed into an idea I had without really thinking it through too much. First I thought I'd use a standard sheet of computer paper with a section six inches wide running diagonally from corner to corner. I was going to foundation paper piece strips of ginghams within those strips, then add white on the two remaining opposite corners.

i haven't gotten very far

In my mind, it would have been a variation on this quilt I had seen on Alex's blog. So I went crazy cutting random width strips from my ginghams. But then I decided maybe there was a much more interesting and hopefully easier (im not so sure now) way of doing it. I made this mockup in paint (then drew the diagonal cutting marks on with pencil) a few weeks ago and had planned to go this route. Where I'd sew strips of stacked coins to strips of white, then slice and dice and end up with blocks for two different quilts.

cutting diagram

I've got plenty of gingham, I told myself. Only the green machine wasn't liking this process so I've finally switched to my mother's Riccar, which is only 30 years old... and it's sewing like a dream. So there you have it. The coffee just finished brewing and I'm about to go make serious headway on project gingham. Wish me luck!