CRAZY FOR BEES

     I'm always drawn to bee themed items, especially fabrics.

So when I saw BEE JOYFUL by Moda at my local quilt store I was crazy in love. Of course I wanted to do a hexi quilt! I plotted, I drooled at the ideas online and in my many books, and I dove in. What could go wrong----right! Well let me tell you a little story about the quilt that was made THREE times.

QUILT NUMBER 1:

     I started by cutting my hexagons using a set of Cut Shapes by Quilt Sense and put them all out on my work table. I spent a great deal of time working out how I wanted the fabrics placed so the designs would work out just so.

And then we moved! Before I could sew all my blocks and strips together I had to pack them up. But I was organized so no problem?

      The new place wasn’t really set up to quilt yet but, I was motivated to get started. So I put my blocks out on a bed and went to work. And I finish putting it together! But why is it at an angle?

Check the layout--. I offset those little black triangles.

So I took the WHOLE thing apart. I took Every Block apart and reset those little black triangles!

QUILT NUMBER 2

     I put the blocks on the bed again and I sewed those blocks together right. But about ¾ of the way through I had to admit I was getting a lot of seams that just didn’t want to meet up. I had lots of puckers. With the design I had picked I had alot of edges that were on the bias. With all the seam ripping I had way too much stretch going on.

 

So I took it ALL apart.

QUILT NUMBER 3

     I felt that if I took out the black triangles I could get rid of some of the stretch. The triangle pieces where just too out of shape.

It would mean changing the design and now doing all those fun Y-seams but, oh well.

    In the end the quilt ended up being smaller than planned (about 60”X 54”)

and the stretch that remained made matching every seam prefect out of the question. so not my best work. But, I finished and I learned a lot about Y-seams. I think it will defiantly be a donation quilt as I'm not sure I want to look at it any more. But that's O.K.

I'm not a big fan of UFO's. When I have a problem with a quilt I may scale it back or change it up but, I try to finish, make it useful, learn something and move on.

But 3 times, oh well !
Hope your having a wonderful day!