A wandering quilt – mine, the honey bee quilt

This month I start a journey with a new traveling quilt group called Wandering Quilt.

I have done a traveling quilt group before in 2015 and received an incredible quilt that I never posted about.  Maybe I should post that soon.  Here is a pic of that quilt in case you are interested.

That project really tested my skills.  Our group had some incredibly talented women and I doubt I measured up, but I was honored to be a part of their group.

Just in case you are not familiar with traveling quilts here is the idea:  Each member of your group creates a starter block and usually writes a journal with details, theme and style they would like their quilt to end up.  You send your starter block to another member in your group (usually there is a list, and you send it to the next lady on the list), they have a month to add on to your starter block and get your quilt going.  Then, they send it to the next woman on the list and so on and so on until your quilt arrives back to you.  In the meantime, as your quilt is traveling to each member of your group, their quilts are as well, so you will be adding to their quilts.

We have 10 women in our group.  That means that 9 ladies besides me will be working on my quilt and I will be working on 9 different quilts.  All themed.

The Theme:

I’ve been working on my theme and starter block for quite a bit.  And have decided that I would like to have a ‘bee’ themed quilt.

My dad has about 5-6 bee hives and every summer I am out there helping him with the honey.  Being allergic to bees I stay away from their hives.  My chore is usually running a knife over the honeycombs and removing the wax caps so the honey can flow.  I think it’s called skiving (not positive about that).

I usually eat quite a bit of honey as I do. 🙂

Some pics of inspiration:

what goes better with bees than flowers?  I’d like a fair amount of flowers on my quilt as well.  Early last year, I finished a mod corsage quilt, and I LOVE cutting flowers from fabrics and then appliqueing them onto other fabrics.  I’d really like to see that on my quilt.

Naturally, I’d like a fair amount of bees on my quilt.  I found several blocks from Bee in my Bonnet that I liked.

I’m also envisioning lots of hexagons.

This year is going to be THE year for me and hexies, but more on that later.

Besides bees, hexagons, and flowers, I thought it would be cute to have phrases that have been altered to include the word ‘bee’.

Style of Quilt

At first, while planning, I had thought my bee quilt would probably end up similar to my daydream quilt from the 2015 traveling quilt group, random and whimsical, but after some serious thought, I’ve decided that I want a medallion quilt.

But not just any medallion quilt.  I want a modern medallion.  I want a medallion where it’s not just rounds and rounds around a center square, but the rounds aren’t always symmetrical.  I found some examples of this below.

The quilt below was what pushed me over the edge for a medallion quilt.  I love the quirks.  The diamonds in only a few places, the color differences between one side and the other.

the only thing about medallion quilts is that they always end up square.  And since I received a square quilt last time, I prefer to get a rectangle one this go round.

I found some examples below.

Color Palette

For colors which is my favorite part this time, I want GREEN.  I want dark moody hunter green and bright happy emerald green.

I also want a fair amount of black and white used in my quilt, particularly black and white stripe.  I like metallic gold as well.

The green in the above and below image is the PERFECT shade of green I’m looking for.  I’m also looking at pastels with the green, gold and black.

I’m very excited about this quilt.  All of the images used in the above part of this post were taken from pinterest.  They are all pinned on a board here with links to their original places.

The Starter Block

For the center of my medallion, I wanted a little lady bee with lots of flowers.

I made her first, embroidery and applique and I had my lady bee.

Then I cut lots of flowers from fabrics and interfaced them, planning on applique them like I mentioned earlier.

This week i cut all of my hexagons from pastel fabrics.  I used my hex n more ruler and cut 4.5″ half hexies.

I bordered it with black and white dots.

My lady bee has been sewn down to my starter block, but I have yet to sew the flowers.  I’ve been playing with the arrangement.  I also didn’t end up using all that I had cut and planned to use.  And I ended up with a different arrangement than the one I had in my head.

But I like it.  Quite a bit actually.

I didn’t use much of my color palette.  I had the idea that if I used all light colors my center my glow in the middle of all the rounds the quilt might end up with.  Maybe.

My daughter took one look at this and laughed.  I’m not sure what that was about.  She probably thinks I’m always silly.  Maybe I am.

I’ll think I’ll just leave lady bee hanging here until I have to ship her off to another quilter in February.

I cannot wait to see her grow and I also am excited about working on other themed quilts for the women of Wandering Quilts.

xo, Melanie