Traveling Quilt Bee: The Beginning

When I saw that sign ups were open for the Traveling Quilt Bee on Instagram, I was very intrigued and signed up. I have seen a number of other quilters participate in these sorts of bees, but this one caught my eye because the quilt isn't necessarily going to be a medallion quilt -- the next quilters in the chain won't add to all four sides, just one or two!

Here's my color inspiration mosaic:

The floral print in the upper lefthand corner is a large scale fabric that I bought eight yards of about a year ago at one of the local quilt shops with the intent to use it as a backing. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to use it so I built my color palette around it, minus the olive green.

Here's my design mosaic:

The Moda Building blocks quilt in the bottom left is probably closest to my "vision" and will likely be the easiest to achieve in this style of bee. The main focus is classic blocks in various sizes without any sashing or borders.

This weekend I made my starting block! I used Judy Martin's Star Cluster block, but adjusted it to make a 20" finished block.

I used all small scale prints and tonals as my focus fabrics and Kona white as my background. We also are including a journal with our quilts as it travels along so that our bee mates can add notes about what they did! I wrote in a lot of details about what I am looking for, as well as included the size of my block and where it came from, then recommended some block sizes for going forward.

This should be a fun adventure for the rest of the year! I am very excited to get my first quilt to work on at the end of this month!

Sharing at Fabric Tuesday, Let's Bee Social, and Sew Cute Tuesday!