I've met a couple of quilters online by joining first the Louisiana Traveling Quilt Bee. Soon after I joined the Bee Great Quilting Bee. I've already finished the quilts from those bees and written about them: you can read about the resulting quilts by clicking on the title links. And here.
Of course, there's lots of emailing and chatting when you're in a bee. After all, someone has to keep track of what has happened and what is going on. During one of those conversations, I decided to invite my bee mates over for a play date. Two ladies took me up on my offer, and on Saturday I had company over. Except I never really considered them company in the formal sense of the word. I felt that I already sort of knew them since we've been chatting and sewing together for a while. But, we had never met in person. I did stalk them on Facebook, but I assume they stalked me, too. Isn't that what everyone does?
So, on Saturday Kelly and Erika arrived. We hugged and said hello and visited
Good plan! Except the blocks were harder than we thought. And we got confused. The directions (I've decided) were written with two choices but that's not clear. So we started with one option and followed directions right into option two, which cut fabric that had been cut correctly following directions in option one. Arrgh. Don't be fooled by the smile in this picture. It was stressful at times. In the end, we figured it out.
I'm using the term we loosely, though. I did no math. And I didn't pick up the cutter or the clutter. I just sewed. Erika saved my hide on that one. I told her I want her to visit on a regular basis: she cut, she pressed, she organized the blocks.
Really! All I did was sew. Half-square triangles. Flying Geese. Nine-patch (finally). Well, I talked, too. But you know that!
We finally got the block finished and I helped Erika set up a small quilt on the long-arm so she could play.
She had such a pretty little quilt! We talked and figured out what she could do and then she played. And love it!
Look at her beautiful smile! This is her small quilt almost complete. She doesn't have much to do at home.
At about the time that Erika finished her small quilt, Kelly completed her bee block. So we celebrated.
And so, all three block are finished. I had a few seams left on my block, but it didn't take long to wrap those up. Now to get them into the mail tomorrow. Then to load a fresh quilt onto the long-arm and get that one out of the way.
What are you working on this week?
This looks like a lot of fun! Wish I was close enough to visit.
ReplyDeleteOh it was! We didn't accomplish as much as we had hoped, but it was fun to get to know each other and laugh at our quilting. Turns out we're all very different quilters. What surprised me is that, although I'm much older, I'm much more free in my attitudes and approach. I've let go of the perfection that they are quite strict about. They, however, are free in other ways and that made me a bit jealous. I'm going to work on that. The jealousy, too.
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