The Terrifyingly Awesome Quilt - Bloggers Quilt Festival

One of my favorite things about being involved in the online sewing community is participating in Virtual Quilting Bees. What's a virtual quilting bee? It's the modern day Quilting Bee - little packages of fabric are mailed out to each of your fellow bee members and then weeks later finished blocks zip their way back to you so you can assemble your quilt top. When you're done you've got a quilt that's completed with blocks made by your friends from all over the world - and the results can be a pretty neat sometimes.

(Packages of fabric ready to head out)

I've been in quite a few Virtual Quilting Bees and have to say this one has been one of my favorites. The girls (and one guy!) of Bee Tweet are a GREAT group of people and I'm so excited to have this finished quilt that they all had a hand in helping me make. (Photo heavy post!)

(The first blocks mailed back to me)

When I was figuring out what I wanted to do for my month, I decided to go all out and just go crazy with a scrappy quilt. I found and fell in love with this block tutorial by my friend Aneela and told my Bee Tweeters to generally follow her guidelines but really just do what they wanted - I knew the blocks would all be so colorful and crazy that they'd all work together in the end.

(Up to 9 blocks now)

Once the blocks started coming in and I was laying them all next to each other I thought to myself that this was kind of both scary and awesome all at once. So the Terrifyingly Awesome quilt was born.

(The beginning of a quilt top)

I debated on sashing the blocks together but I decided against it. For one, these blocks are HUGE - 17.5 inches and sashing would have made the quilt top ginormous. Plus by then I had just totally embraced the terrifying awesomeness and was just running with it 100%.

(The quilt top all done)

I really had wanted to have this quilt done by Sewing Summit - because we had figured out that 8 out of the 11 members of Bee Tweet were going to be in attendance! Very rarely do you get to meet the people that actually made your blocks for you, but that's the great thing about Sewing Summit. :]

(L-R Jen, Leigh, Chris, Darci, Amy, Rachel, me, Ali)

But unfortunately I got too busy and the quilt was only about 1/2 quilted at the Summit. That didn't stop us from having a Bee Tweet photo op and getting a little silly. We even gave my quilt some love and did a classic summer camp photo pose on it as well.

(Summer camp)

Once I got home from Sewing Summit I was determined to get this quilt finished! It only took a few hours of dedicated quilting time on my new BabyLock Grace to do the straight line quilting.

(Determined to finish!)

I love the look and how easy machine sewn binding is!

(Binding going on!)

And finally - in and out of the washer and it was DONE!

(Piggies)

I can't thank my fellow Bee Tweet members enough for making me these crazy awesome huge colorful blocks. They each put in some of their own favorite scraps in addition to the fabric I sent them and it's so much fun to look over the blocks and search out all the different prints.

All the members of Bee Tweet:

Ali
John
Leigh
Rachel
Chris
Amisha
Rebecca
Darci
Jen
Amy

And if you've made it this far - I'm sure you want to see some pictures of the FINISHED quilt! ;]

(This is when I dropped it into the creek)

The back of the quilt I kept pretty simple, with a huge improvised block of all my favorite green and aqua prints, on a huge sea of Kona Grass.

On the whole quilt I did horizontal quilting, and then in just one column I did vertical quilting too, creating this grid on some of the blocks.

And the aqua binding. I knew with how crazy the front of the quilt was I wanted a solid binding, and this aqua was in almost every block so it tied everything together great.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this quilt!

Linking up to Amy's Bloggers Quilt Festival - you should too!

My Sewing Summit post, in letter form.

Dear Sewing Summit attendees:

I have been needing & wanting to blog about Sewing Summit for the past week, but every time I open a new post page I just sit and stare at the empty screen. I mean, where do I start? How do I sum up with just words and pictures how I felt about the whole weekend? I just can't.

In the mean time I've been reading through everyone else's blog posts that they've been linking up on the Sewing Summit blog post here. I love everyone's different perspectives on the weekend & what they did & their views of the classes & places they ate. So that's what I've decided to do here. You don't need a complete run down of the whole weekend, anyways, from start to finish, that's what all the other blog posts are for by the lovely friends that have written such great accounts of the weekend. All I can offer is my perspective, a kind of behind the scenes of Sewing Summit about what I loved and did and saw and felt.

(Warning: it's about to get long & picture heavy! :] )

The whole year prior to Sewing Summit Amy & I had been planning and scheming, but the week before things just got crazy. My whole front room was overtaken with boxes and supplies and swag and finally empty boxes had to start going out on the front porch so we could make it through our hallway.

Everyone in my family got in on helping me with different Sewing Summit tasks. Some were happier to help than others.

The day before I finally forced myself to go out and do a few things for myself.

When I checked into our hotel room on Thursday & saw this thank you card from the hotel staff it got really real. Loved working with Jonathan & Lois at Little America.

I looked out our window into the city that I love so much & just took a deep breath and thought, OK, this is it.

The opening reception was so fun. I kept hearing "oh! I know you!".

This group of crazies is special to me because we're all in a virtual quilting bee together - Bee Tweet. We had 8 of our 11 members there and had SO much fun together.

Every time I rode up to our floor in the elevator I thought how awesome it was that just for one weekend all my favorite sewing & blogging friends were all living just a button's push away.

I loved getting to run & grab some quick take-out Friday night with these two girls. Jen had never been to Cafe Rio before and so Darci & I hooked her up with a big pork salad.

I went and peeked into the fat quarter swap sorting room & loved all this colorfulness going on - but loved even more all the girls lounged around on the hotel beds & couches knitting & chatting & Tweeting & laughing.

On Saturday the class section kicked into high gear & since this was the part of the Summit I was more in charge of, I ran around like a crazy chicken for most of the day. Getting things in place here and making sure a laptop was connected there and making sure all the teachers had what they needed for their classes.

In between classes I tried to take a breath and loved peeking in on the different sessions going on.

I mean, can I admit that I was a little proud? To poke my head in a door and see this:

Gorgeous, amazing, creative women all in one room learning from and inspiring each other? Taking a class at a conference that started as a little dream in my mind over a year ago and now was right there in front of my eyes? It was kind of all sorts of amazing.

Or to sneak in on this room as it was being set up and knowing that in just a few short hours it was going to be buzzing with chatter & laughter from people that had gathered from all over the country, even world, to support a little crazy idea that I had nurtured and grown and worked my ass off to make happen? Blows me away.

I love this group of girls.

And this group of girls.

And all the other groups of girls that I didn't get pictures of / with. Seriously. I have no pictures of myself with anyone. Next year, please bug me to take a picture with you. Really.

And look at all these happy faces.  Everyone seemed to be having so much fun!  I wish I could have been everywhere & done everything that you all got to do.

I knew that Jeni was going to be giving away a Kona color card to each of her students in her color theory class & I knew I wanted to be there for that. I was in the back of the room when Jeni's presentation ended and she said ... I'd like to thank Robert Kaufman for donating a Kona card for each of you ... and I'm not kidding, I died laughing when grown women jumped up out of their seats cheering & started hugging & high fiving each other. It was so fun!

I loved the sewing room. A place that each night lots of us gathered to chat and snack and laugh, I mean, look at all this awesomeness going on in the sewing room Saturday night. (Click on the picture to see a large version). Huge, huge thanks to Gretchen and Mckenzie from BabyLock and Terry from Cotton Shops for supporting us on that idea.

I loved our office & how crazy & insane it was and how it was a huge dumping ground for all sorts of sewing supplies & fabric & food & computers & ironing boards & make up & boxes. I think that the staff at the Little America was totally confused at our conference & all the odd sewing stuff we had.

I loved my dress I had for the opening reception but wish it wasn't in the same color palate as the hotels somewhat-dated color scheme.

I really, REALLY loved this, but it's special & gets a post all it's own. :]

So what else can I say but thank you?  Thank you for believing in us.  Thank you for leaving your husbands and kids and families and jobs and other obligations for a weekend to be with us.  Thank you for coming together with excitement and support for each other and making the idea of the Sewing Summit a reality.

Amy & I worked hard this past year to get the details & schematics in order for Sewing Summit to take place, but YOU all made it happen.  With each excited tweet we saw about Sewing Summit, it made all the late nights worth it.  With each notification that another ticket had been sold, it made the sacrifices our families were taking a little easier to swallow.  We believe in this online sewing community, and are so humbled and happy to have provided a place to help take it to the next level - to witness the internet come alive - to help the real life connections happen - to see people we love and admire and respect and adore in real life.  In the flesh.  It. was. amazing.

Gah!  I don't want to cheese it up.  Can I just say - see you all next year!?

Love, Erin

Quilt Uber-Fest Block Tutorial

UPDATE: Sorry for the problems downloading the .pdf! It's all added and linked below. Let me know if you have any other issues! :]



I'm so excited to be a part of the Quilt Uber-Fest Block-A-Day blog hop that my friend Scott from Blue Nickel Studios has organized! Scott sent 15 of us sewing bloggers some of Nel Whatmore's upcoming line Sleeping Beauty to play with, as well as some gorgeous Kaffe Fassett and asked us to create a block that included some element of either a log cabin or half square triangles. Didn't you love the pretty block Jan shared with us yesterday?



I admit, the fabric didn't speak to me at first, I'm not a butterflies and flowery leaves type girl. So I knew I wanted to keep my block construction simple so it didn't compete too much with the fabric, and I have to say, I LOVE my finished block. Do you see the little quarter log cabins in the corner? It's subtle, but the requested design element is there. :]



And I am now in LOVE with the woven stripes fabric (the bright pink stripes) from Kaffe Fassett. The color is so vibrant and the fabric so soft and easy to work with. This block is definitely beginner-friendly, so if you're needing a quick block to whip up or are making the whole Uber-Fest sampler quilt, know that my block will be a nice and easy break from all the crazy flying geese and half square triangles in the other amazing blocks.



Here's a .pdf download of the full block cutting and assembling instructions. Make sure you add a picture to the Uber-Fest Flickr group if you're sewing along!



Tomorrow's block will be shared by the talented Charlie Scott of Qubee Quilts. And if you need the full line up of stops on the blog hop, check out Scotts introductory post here.