Virtual Quilting Bee: It begins!

I've had a desire to quilt for a while but the thought of completing an entire quilt is so daunting to me that I've never gotten around to it.  When I was asked to be part of a Virtual Quilting Bee I jumped at the chance!  Not only would I get to connect with acquaintances from college (who I didn't know were so crafty) but I'd finally get to try my hand at quilting to figure out what I would want for my own quilt.

Here are the basics of a Virtual Quilting Bee if you haven't heard of it before (I hadn't!):

- There are 12 "bees" and each one is assigned to be Queen Bee of a particular month.  

- When it's your month, you choose fabric to send to the other "bees" with instructions on what kind of quilt square to make.

- When the squares are sent back to you, you finish the quilt.

Our Quilting Bee has quite a range of sewing and quilting experience (for example - Me: lots of sewing experience, not much quilting experience.)

So March is our first month, and I got even more excited when I got this package of fabric in the mail and the instructions for our first square!  (Of course I forgot to take a picture of all the fabric before I cut it into strips.)

March Quilt Block

20" Wonky Log Cabin

1/4" seams

Luckily March's Queen Bee gave some great websites with tutorials on our first square.  I won't bother with any sort of tutorial because these sites have already done such a good job.  Go check them out!

Quilt Dad

Ellison Lane Quilts

Tallgrass Prairie Studio

I followed Quilt Dad's tutorial for my squares, first cutting all the fabric into stripes, 1.5", 2", 2.5" and 3" wide.

 I thought a tea pot would make a nice center.

Here's a few pictures of how making my first wonky log cabin went.

This is when I started to realize just how big a 20" square was going to be! You can see it's reached the edges of my 18" wide cutting mat.

 

 And done!  I had so much fun making it and definitely learned a few things along the way.  I can't wait to see what I get to make next month!

Do you quilt?  Have you been part of a Virtual Quilting Bee?