Being Sewcial

Towards the end of last year, I said farewell to 3 bees that I'd happily sewn with for the past 2 years - Always Bee Learning, Mid-Century Modern, and That Stash Bee. I made lots of good friends in those bees, friends I definitely want to keep in touch with, and we've made some beautiful quilts together - all really good stuff, right? But the bee blocks were stacking up in the ole stash, and honestly, I guess I just needed a change of pace, feeling that sticking with my one charity bee, FAITH Circle of do.Good Stitches, would be enough bee action for a while.

And then I got an invite to a new bee starting up. Bee Sewcial was different. It was all about using solid fabric. It was all about improv. It was all about derived inspiration. And it sounded challenging in a new way that quite honestly, I just couldn't resist.

So it started in January with Stephanie/Spontaneous Threads at the helm. With photos from a Dale Chihuly exhibit at the Denver Botanic Garden as inspiration, and an extensive list of Kona cottons as a suggested palate, we were given free reign. As in, anything goes - follow where the inspiration leads, creating our best improv interpretation on the theme.

I admit I was frozen for a bit, but one night I just jumped in, with my stack of solids on my cutting table, and my rotary cutter gripped tight. I had flipped through Lucie Summers' book Quilt Improv a few days before so I guess I had the reverse applique "porthole" on my mind, though how it came to be fractured in the block below is all due to the mystery of improv.

As I began my second block, all I knew was I wanted lots of dark blue (Kona Nightfall), and there was a vague notion about slicing through the pieced strips at some point.

The requirement for this bee is 2 approximately 12" blocks (or the equivalent in 1 large block or several smaller blocks). And 1 terrific-to-me feature is that we've been told not to trim the blocks up. So they'll be heading out just as you see them, fresh from a good press. 

So I'm in! This should be a stimulating experiment in stepping outside one's comfort zone. If you feel like checking in on us, just look for #BeeSewcial on Instagram. We just might be going where no bee has gone before . . .