a quilting bee

I don't think I mentioned that I was asked by Dana (aka: the queen of quilt giveaways) from Old Red Barn Co. to be part of a quilting bee this year! I was excited that she thought I would measure up to the others in our group. There are 12 of us each taking a month this year to be "in charge". When it is our month we send out fabric to the other 11 members with guidelines for the blocks we would like them to make. At the end of the month, they mail them back and you have 11 (+ your own = 12) blocks to make into a quilt. If you are interested you can go to our Flickr group and see who we are and what we're up to. One of our members is a graphic designer and she designed our cute little button over there on my sidebar, A Notion or Two.

I have never done anything like this so I thought it would be a fun adventure. I could sit back the first few months, make blocks for other people, and kind of see how it is done and how I would approach my month.

I was assigned January! Yikes! I actually had most of the fabric I needed for a green and white quilt I had been thinking of doing. So I decided that I would just do that. But the idea I had was kind of abstract and hard to explain so I was mulling and mulling and was inspired by a little birdie quilt that Amber made. I thought that a little bird on each block of green (leaves? or leave-ish designs) would be really cute.

So I just sent out the bundles from these fabrics and am really excited to see what I get back! They are mostly Michael Miller and Amy Butler with a Moda or two thrown in.

I've just been redecorating (or some could argue, decorating for the first time) my living room and this lap quilt will fit right in. I just got a new rug, pillow, and some new flowers and rearranged the furniture and my pictures.... so I can't wait for this quilt to have a new home.