Blogging the Process : my 3x6 bee blocks

One thing I'd like to start doing more is doing some Blogging the Process posts. So often you just see blogs with pretty pictures of finished items, but for me, I like it when they dig deeper and SHOW and TELL me what went into creating an item. Sometimes they'll be kind of like tutorials, with step by step instructions, but sometimes it will just be how I picked the fabrics, how I decided on an idea, etc. Just the process. So much of what I enjoy about sewing is the process, anyways, it makes sense to talk about it more.

There's even a whole movement to get people started talking more about the process of creating - the Process Pledge.




I am in a Virtual Quilting Bee called the 3x6 bee. Every quarter out of the year I'm paired up with 6 other sewists from around the world - we all specify to each other a color scheme we'd like to have, and then everyone picks ONE block style, making that specific block 6 different times, in each of the other members chosen color scheme. Make sense? The colors that I chose are aqua / green / white. So at the end of the quarter, I'll receive 6 different quilt blocks from my bee members, they'll all be different STYLES of blocks, but they'll all be made out of aqua / green / white fabrics. So they'll tie together without being identical. Cool idea, huh?





So when it came to making my blocks for my bee members, it started out when I fell in love with this quilt and these blocks that Melanie at Texas Freckles came up with.



(photo credit: texas freckles)

Aren't they pretty?! And then a few weeks ago I was watching some quilting tutorials on You Tube and remembered this video of a method of making half-square triangles, and I knew it would work to make these scrappy versions, too. This is what I did:

Gathered a bunch of strips that were about 8 inches long and between 1 and 2 inches wide.




Sewed the strips together until they were approximately as wide as they were tall (mine were about 8 inches square, but they could be bigger or smaller, doesn't matter much)




Trimmed the blocks up so they were the same size as each other (mine were about 7.5" squares at this point). Lay the blocks right sides facing, with one block's strips horizontal and one block's strips vertical.




I am not usually a pinner, but it really helps on this block. I pinned a few of the sides and then starting at one corner of the block, sewed around the entire perimeter of the block with 1/4" seam allowance, all the way back until I met up with my starting point. Yes, you basically sew the block together at this point!



Now the magic! Use the diagonal lines on either your ruler or your cutting mat to cut the blocks twice on the diagonal from corner to corner. This is what it will look like after you make the cuts:




And then after you flip open the blocks:




Isn't that cool? And so quick! Now just trim up the 4 smaller blocks and figure out which way to arrange them. You can get lots of different looks by changing the direction the diagonals lay. This is what I decided on:




And then I just brought it up to the required 12.5" square block size by adding white on the outsides.




This bee member had requested red / aqua / white for her block colors - didn't it turn out pretty! Let me know if you try out this method of making this block!