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so…. awhile back, i was contacted by a friend<\/a> that i’d met through blogging and she invited me to join a virtual quilting bee. i’d seen evidence of another virtual quilting bee flitting about the craft blogs and i was so excited to be invited to join one myself! when i saw the list of other bloggers that were invited to join, i got even more excited! many of them were quilters whose work i had been admiring on flickr<\/a>. it was like being invited to a celebrity party! if you are wondering what a virtual quilting bee is, check out our blog<\/a>. there is a quick, easy description in the sidebar on that site. i’ve been wanting to tell you all about it, but wanted to wait until i had something to show.<\/p>\n a few weeks ago, my first fabric showed up in the mail. (it’s so fun to get good mail!) i opened it to find three blocks of fabric:<\/p>\n the instructions came over e-mail (and the blog) later that day with the loose stipulations to “make a 10″ to 11″ square that is made up of rectangles or squares. This means that anything that is striped, log cabin-y, box-y or wonky.” one of my tiny fears about joining the group was that i’d have … let’s call it “quilter’s block” …. and be stumped as to what design to create. not with these fabrics! for some reason, as soon as i saw them, i pretty much knew what i was going to do. i was relieved when her instructions arrived and fit perfectly with my plan. in fact, it was so obvious to me what the design “should” be that i was concerned that someone else in the group would create an identical block (which, really, wouldn’t have been a big deal, right?). i was relieved to learn that there were six different fabrics, so not everyone got the same three that i did.<\/p>\n i finally sat down, late one night to actually make it. cutting the fabric was a bit daunting (can’t go buy more to replace it!), but realizing that even if something dreadful happened there was enough fabric that i’d probably still be able to make a block of some kind helped. also, remembering that mistakes can often lead to wonderful design serendipity helped. i first attempted to do something very wonky, but didn’t like the way that turned out (hmmm….. need to dissect denyse’s ‘wonky’ technique a little longer, apparently), so i did something a little different. because i am a slap-dash sewer extraordinaire, you can still see the wonky design idea on the back of the block:<\/p>\n i think the slant was just wayyyyy too pronounced. plus, i don’t think d.s.<\/a> ever does parallelograms. anyway, bleh. but like i said, i fixed it and then decided to add a little bit of hand-stitching detail and here is the final block!<\/p>\n i hope she likes it. i do! i’m looking forward to the next month’s quilting challenge!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" so…. awhile back, i was contacted by a friend that i’d met through blogging and she invited me to join a virtual quilting bee. i’d seen evidence of another virtual quilting bee flitting about the craft blogs and i was … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/lh6.ggpht.com\/carissaabc\/SELCuO7XP2I\/AAAAAAAAFwQ\/BZVG_vQVQ3o\/IMGP1739.JPG?imgmax=720\")
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