A Friendship Quilt Around the World

I’ve been toying with an idea for a long time, after seeing the many beautiful patchwork quilts, made by sewing bee groups, on Flickr. I’ve wanted to have a go, but all the participants seem to be experienced and the blocks they contribute are often quite intricate designs, as specified by each member of the group.

All a bit scary for a novice. They must have started somewhere though so I came up with a plan for a virtual sewing bee of my own. I sent out a few emails to blog friends just to see if there would be any interest in such a project. I didn’t want to blog all about it and then find nobody wanted to take part. To my surprise almost everyone said, “Yes!” and we now have a group of twelve ready to begin this year long venture.

Abi ~ Creating paper Dreams

Alexa ~ Trimming the Sails

Alison ~ Life in the Slow Lane

Amy ~ Over at Our Place

Beverly ~ BE Glorious

Deb ~ Paper Turtle

Deb ~ Debs World

Fiona (me!) ~ Staring at the Sea

Jacky ~ Scrappy Jacky

Jo ~ Buckingham’s Palace

Jo ~ Sugar and Scrap

Sian ~ From High in the Sky

The idea is that everyone in the group will be assigned a month and will choose their preferred colour scheme. During that month everyone else will make a block for that person to their own design. Allowing for the fact that we all have different levels of sewing experience. Many of us have never made patchwork before. I didn’t want anyone to feel put off by that. We all have to start somewhere, right?

You don’t need any fancy equipment. A pair of decent scissors, pins and some neutral coloured thread should suffice. I imagine most people will sew their blocks on a machine, but they could be sewn by hand if that suits you better. The blocks can be anything from the simplest four patch to something a bit more challenging. Whatever you feel comfortable with. I want it to be fun, not stressful.

For now all I need you to do is decide on a colour scheme. This could be fairly specific eg blue and yellow or shades of blue, more general eg Autumnal or Summery colours, or you could just embrace the hotch potch nature of patchwork and go for the ‘pot luck’ option. Your choice entirely.

I also need an address from everyone so that I can make up a master list to send out to all the participants. If everyone could contact me by the end of the week with posting/mailing details (including surname) and a preferred colour scheme, that would be great. I can’t wait to get started.

I’ll be back soon with more info, useful links and some tutorials that may be of help.

PS If anyone reading this post is interested in the idea of a virtual quilting bee, I’d be happy to organise another group.