"Bee My Honey" Quilt

Crafters are also collectors.  You know what I'm talking about.  Whether you quilt, knit, scrapbook, paint, make jewelry, or do a multitude of these, you can never have enough supplies in your stash.  You go to the craft store to pick a few needed supplies and come home with a bags full of things you may need someday for a future project.  Heck, sometimes you even base your vacation plans around where the craft stores are located along the way.

A couple of years ago we were on a road trip through Eastern Oregon and were passing through the town of Joseph.  As soon as we were within cell reception coming into town, I quickly googled quilting stores.  Joseph is an artist community so I was pretty sure there would be a pretty good chance of a good quilt store.  I wasn't disappointed.

With no particular project in mind, I spent some time browsing the selection for something that I could take home and work into a project later.  I was super excited when I came across this "Bee My Honey" line of fabric from Moda.

My favorite thing about this line is the actual "B" fabric.  We have collected letter B's for a few years and I thought a lap quilt made out of this fabric would look great with the rest of our collection.  Below is a sample of all the different fabric designs in this line.

Not sure what I was going to make, I bought two jelly rolls just in case.  A jelly roll is made up of 42 strips of 2 1/2" wide fabric, generally all from the same line.  These are great because they take the work out of having to sort through an entire store of fabrics to come up with the ones you want to use for your project.  They are also great because you can find a ton of quilting patterns that specifically use jelly rolls.

This past summer I came across this pattern and instantly thought it would be a good one to use for my "B" quilt.

Since I had two jelly rolls, I decided to make two of these quilts and give one to a good friend for her Christmas present.  With everything that happened last fall with Scott's job and our move, I was only able to actually get Tonja's done in time for Christmas.

I pulled my quilt out a few weeks ago to work on.  The way this quilt works, I took three of the jelly roll strips and sew them together.

Then using my pyramid ruler I cut alternating triangles the entire length of the strips.  Each set of strips made nine triangles.

Using six of the triangles, I turned them around to make a hexagon shape.

I had thirteen of these hexagons. The next step was to lay these out to form the majority of the quilt top pattern.

Using the leftover pieces, I formed one final mismatched hexagon and filled in around the edges to complete the top layout.  It was about at this point where I realized that, in my mind, these fabrics were really busy and the hexagon pattern was hard to see.  Live, learn, and take notes for next time.

Starting along the lefthand side, I sewed each row together.

Then I sewed all the rows together to complete the top.  I had ordered the backing fabric for this quilt last year when I was working on Tonja's quilt.  It's my favorite thing about this quilt.  I had to do some sewing on it to make it the same size as the front.  Then I cut out the batting for the middle of the quilt and I was ready to find someone to quilt it all together for me.

I went to the local quilt store and asked the owner if she had some recommendations for anyone in the area that might be able to quilt it together.  She gave me a list and highlighted the ones she recommended.  I called the first lady and she told me that she was too busy with personal issues to be able to help me right now.  I picked her first because she lives two houses away from us and I thought that would be convenient.  So I moved on and called the second lady on the list.  I had driven past her shop several times on the other end of the island when we had gone out hiking.  She asked me if I could come in the next weekend and she would take a look at it.

Scott and I drove out there one Saturday.  I was so excited.  I knew exactly how I wanted it quilted.  I love this idea and knew this would be a great quilt to try it on.  I had all of my quilt pieces, along with this photo as an example of how I wanted her to quilt it.  I just simply wanted it quilted in straight lines, following along the seams.

The lady was very nice, but she took one look at my example and said that it was too hard for her to quilt that pattern on her long-arm quilting machine.  But she was confident that I could do this quilting on my own at home on my machine.  I stood there debating what to do.  Should I just compromise and pick one of her preprogrammed patterns.  I knew I would not be happy with that choice.  I had my heart set on the triangle quilting pattern.  Sadly, I packed up my quilt pieces and my example and left.  I was disappointed and I didn't do a very good job of hiding it.

So off to Walmart we went to buy basting safety pins (which are just super large safety pins).  I watched a couple of You Tube videos and decided to move forward with doing this myself.  Giving it a try was better than shoving it back in a drawer and never knowing.

I laid out the backing, the batting, and the quilt top on my kitchen floor and went to work pinning it.

Almost three hundred safety pins later, I was ready to head in to my sewing machine.

It was actually about two weeks between meeting with the quilt lady and getting to this step.  My sewing machine did not come with a "walking foot", which is what you want to use when quilting or working with several layers of fabric.  Thankfully I still have the book that came with my machine when I bought it 20 years ago and I was able to find the part number and order the walking foot from Sears.

Just installing the walking foot on my machine took some google research.  What did people do before the Internet????  After I finally installed it right and took a few practice passes on some scraps, I was ready to go.  I honestly can't believe how easy it was!

Just a couple of hours later, I had my first quilt that I actually did all of the work on!!!!

I pulled out some yellow fabric I had in my stash (that I purchase on a whim to be used on a future project) and used that for the binding.  I liked the contrast the yellow had with the rest of the fabric.

I'm so proud of this quilt!  I feel like emailing the quilt lady back and thanking her for forcing me to step outside of my comfort zone and do something I never thought I could do!  I have this huge renewed sense of confidence and can't wait to get started on my next project!