The Friendly Bee

I’ve made another quilt as part of my quilting ‘stretch’ project this time using the February block from Sherri at A Quilting Life’s mystery block a month. As I said then I don’t know if I’ll manage to make a quilt a month, but I won’t really know unless I try…

When I saw this one was another star I questioned my commitment to my challenge, and also my sewing ability. But, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, so phew.

My sixth charity quilt

As I said above, I wasn’t really looking forward to tackling another star block - the February vintage star block had many small pieces, which made me question why I cut up pieces of fabric to sew them back together again! Which is a fair point, when you look at it like that, but in for a penny, in for a pound and all that.

My original intention was to pull ‘yellow’ fabrics from my stash, as I thought this might lift my mood - but as you can see they ended up more beige than I expected.

Well not entirely beige, there’s some gold and rust colours in there too. The fabrics for this quilt included some more of the old orange curtains and of the duvet cover I used as backing last month, some checked material which I used back in January for the cute little houses, two vintage pillowcases and some new-to-me fat quarters bought for a much reduced price at my sewing group’s recent stash sale, plus some ‘wood effect’ material which dare I say it, I wasn’t in love with and some much smaller scraps which I used as the background on two of the blocks.

But actually it wasn’t anywhere near as daunting as I thought it might be once I started. Now isn’t there a life lesson in there?!

The blocks surprised me and came together relatively quickly.

I find it easier to lay all the elements of the blocks out in their approximate location - this means I don’t either over, or under cut the pieces I need, and it gives me a look at how the blocks might work.

I think the colours work well together - I needed to add the pink flowered background (used on the two blocks on the right) as I didn’t have enough of the fabric used for the blocks on the left, but the colours tone.

And with a bit more sewing I had four friendship star blocks.

Introducing the bees

You’re probably wondering why I’ve named this quilt the Friendly Bee, well the border fabrics should help explain that.

As you can see both of the materials bordering the Friendship star have bees, hence the Friendly Bee name.

The ‘wood effect’ fabric actually works well in this quilt, and tones nicely with the honeycomb fabric used alongside it. The two outer borders are the vintage pillowcases, and as they’re the material I had the most of they were obvious choices for the longer borders.

With the blocks attached I added the outer border, this time using two different fabrics - and I think this works, I wasn’t keen on having two of the same pattern together, so by using the pink flowered material again here I’ve avoided that.

Finishing the quilt

Last month I opted to quilt the Four pink hearts and a hug quilt with diagonal lines, and it worked well. My plan is to try that again, so that’s what I’m part-way through doing for this one too. Yes, this quilt isn’t finished but it’s pretty close - I’ll update this post when it’s actually finished.

I knew that some months it would likely be harder to fit in making a quilt around everything else that life has to offer, that’s why I’ve called it my ‘stretch’ project. I’ll let you know if a few weeks how it turned out.

You can see my other quilts which I’ve made to donate to Project Linus - a charity whose mission is to provide love, a sense of security, warmth and comfort to children, who are sick, disabled, disadvantaged or distressed through the donation of new, homemade, washable quilts and blankets, including those that are part of this ‘stretch’ project in earlier posts. I’m aiming to publish an update on my progress in the last week of each month for the remainder of 2025.

Quilts at The Workhouse

Over Easter we visited The Workhouse, a National Trust property in near to us Southwell. It was our first visit to our nearest National Trust property, and it turned out to be a hugely educational visit too. It was unlike other properties that we’d visited owned by the trust, and as you’d expect that was largely down to the original nature of the property.

I may share more about the property and its original use in a future post, and it’s a topic that deserves sharing, but for today I’m sharing some pictures and information about some of the quilts on display.

They too have a story, and are part of a community project highlighting the impact of domestic violence.

The information sheet alongside this first cushion quilt above says that ‘each square commemorates a women who was killed by a current or former partner’ and that there are two further quilts and cushion as part of this project.

That any quilt like this needs to exist is wrong, but it’s not the first commemorative quilt that I’ve seen either, sadly. Each square has been sewn with love and I’m sure fierce determination that these women won’t be forgotten, and the hope that no further quilts are needed.

I am questioning though if this would be more correctly categorised as gender based violence, which is also completely unacceptable. While I don’t know of each case represented in these quilts, I do have some knowledge of Sabina Nessa, who was murdered in Greenwich close to where we used to live. Sabina was killed by a man unknown to her, rather than a current or former partner, who is now serving a life sentence for her murder.

The Leighann Wightman quilt above is a tribute to her by her stepmother who wanted to use her time during lockdown to create a quilt as a tribute to women who lost their lives to domestic violence from 2016-2020.

The two cushions on display, made later, represent the women who lost their lives between 2020 and 2022.

The quilt below - The Women’s Quilt - pieces together five hundred and ninety-eight women each of whom were connected by a single thread. Every name is included, along with stars, birds, moons and hearts; their names are stitched in the colours of their eyes, the embroidered loops and waves in the hues of their hair. The poignancy in this detail was hard to miss.

All of the exhibits on show were humbling, and a sober reminder of the world we live in today, and as one of the exhibition boards said ‘the most beautiful project that shouldn’t exist’.

Four pink hearts and a hug

I’ve made another quilt as part of my quilting ‘stretch’ project this time using the February block from Sherri at A Quilting Life’s mystery block a month. As I said then I don’t know if I’ll manage to make a quilt a month, but I won’t really know unless I try…

I’m glad that this block was relatively simple to put together as time has been more challenging this month, perhaps the warmer weather or something else, I’m not sure quite why, but I only finished it after a concerted push last night…

My fifth donation quilt

As soon as I saw the centre block was a heart I knew that I’d be using pinks from my stash - but which ones! The pile of pinks on the right of this basket are (from top to bottom) from an old quilt cover, two old shirts, the old quilt cover again, a mystery plain pink and remnants of a much loved Boden sundress. I’ve no recollection of where the plain pink material has come from so perhaps it was part of a mystery bundle I picked up somewhere.

The paler pinks which I’m using for the hearts are likely to be much older and acquired at some point from mum’s stash, and the paler background is from the lining of the sundress. As you’ll see as this post progresses I also added some grey zigzagged material from an old duvet, which was also the backing on last month’s quilt.

Testing the block

As you know I’m making test blocks ahead of making the block for my mystery block of the month quilt and I’m making these blocks into quilts of their own. And this block has relatively few pieces compared to last month’s vintage star block, and was therefore much easier to put together, phew.

The part that required the most concentration was not to cut the wrong side of the sewn line, but I managed that successfully each time - and tbh it really wasn’t that hard, but that was the potential stumbling block (no pun intended) this month.

And in no time at all I’d added borders to the hearts, and joined the blocks together.

But I felt it wasn’t quite there yet, so left it overnight mulling over which fabrics to use for the borders. In the end I decided on a thinner red checked border before adding more of the multi-patterned pink material from the old duvet cover. I think it needed the bold checked thin border to make it work. I also knew that it needed the stripes to match as best they could to avoid it looking messy.

And with a little bit of luck that worked out.

I’ve also changed my mind on which backing to use, originally I thought it would be the multi-patterned pink fabric but I think any more of that would be too much, and so I’ve opted to cut up a paler pink single duvet cover which I bought a couple of years ago on eBay for £1.04 plus postage - as I discovered in the label I’d thoughtfully written for myself when I unfurled the fabric.

Finishing the quilt

I got the quilt to a finished quilt top level in a few days, then it sat for a while waiting for me to assemble it with the batting and backing fabric. In fact I snuck that part in ahead of waiting for family to arrive over Easter, which was a good use of time. Then after the bank holiday I set about quilting it. Remembering that the purpose of these quilts is partly to up my skill levels and to get myself comfortable with both piecing and quilting, as with practice comes a better crafter.

So rather than quilt this one as I have before I decided to quilt it in diagonal rows across the quilt, and then spent ages looking for some masking tape that I was sure I had,. I didn’t find that, but I did find some tape with marked lines on which was probably a better option, or it was once I worked out where to place it most effectively, and so I didn’t sew over it!

I also wanted to change the density of the quilting on the hearts. I considered a different colour thread, but in the end opted to add quilting lines closer together, using the same approach.

And I’m happy with how this quilting style turned out; the tape worked well and could be easily repositioned for each line of sewing. I didn’t have a plan for the spacing between the lines before I started and worked that out as soon as I started to plan the second line - they’re about 8.5cm apart. Yes they could be more precise, and ideally closer together but it was good to discover this process as I went.

It turned out well didn’t it? And four hearts and a hug seems the perfect title for this one.

You can see my other quilts which I’ve made to donate to Project Linus - a charity whose mission is to provide love, a sense of security, warmth and comfort to children, who are sick, disabled, disadvantaged or distressed through the donation of new, homemade, washable quilts and blankets, including those that are part of this ‘stretch’ project in earlier posts. I’m aiming to publish an update on my progress in the last week of each month for the remainder of 2025.