I will admit that I have a rather romanticized view of the famous quilting bee. I see pioneer women, mid-summer, while the fields were quietly growing and the garden already weeded, sitting under an arbor quilting away on a masterpiece. The men folk are pitching horseshoes and lunch is ready for all, just waiting for the ladies to take a break. People come from miles around to participate.I also see Husbands Grandmother and Aunt, after the Christmas decorations were stored until the next year. They traditionally hand and machine pieced their tops (flimsey's) then set the quilt frame up in the living room corner where they would spend the entire winter, quilting. Large quilts, cot quilts, baby quilts. Right before Easter, the frame would go down and the finished quilts would be stored or given to family and friends as gifts. When they had passed, and I was cleaning out 4 floors of Victorian house, (it took me over a year!) many used and unused quilts were found. They lived a perfectly ordered life. I would like a perfectly ordered life.
 | | | | |||
| ||||||
Since that doesn't seem to be imminent, I will share with you a project that my Tuesday Sew and Sews Quilt Group is planning for 2012. A Cutting Bee. I saw a recent episode (#1810) on Fons & Porter describing their take on this project. We discussed it in our group and we are going to give it a try. This is our plan.
- as explained on episode #1810, keeping the group at 10-12 persons is very manageable.
- choose a theme: for example, batiks, 2 or 3 color families, totally scrappy
- decide how many fat quarters each person will bring, they suggest 6. This will give each person 1 1/2 yards of cut strips per person.
- 2 1/2 inch and 4 1/2 inch strips are very versatile and used in many patterns, however, any size could be chosen, depending on the needs of that group.
- bring your mat, rotary cutters, rulers to the event and make sure there is plenty of table space to work. *review with each cutter the measurement mark on the ruler where to cut for the determined measurement. I use Olfa rulers, I cover the edge of the fabric with the yellow line, not to the left of it or the right of it. Directly on. If other use a different determination, the strips will not be the same. Better to finalize that right up front.
- set up 1 or 2 separate tables to display the strips after cutting
- bring lunch and have fun
- for those ladies who are not able to or no longer comfortable cutting the strips there are many other things that they can do to participate. Such as arranging the cut strips on the tables, collecting scrap cuttings for disposable or for the ladies who collect every tiny piece, we have one of those in the group.
- at the end of the event, each lady goes around the display table and chooses a selection of strips to equal what they brought/cut
- everyone is happy, yes?
Comments