January QCA Bee Blocks!

So I joined my first ever quilting bee this year  - through the QCA (Quilt Club Australia) group on FB. I'm a bit nervous but also very excited. I think what I like best about the whole idea is that I'll be making blocks that I wouldn't have chosen for myself so I get to push my own quilting boundaries a bit and gain new skills too. Fun!


January belongs to Erin from Missy Mac Creations and she chose a great paper-pieced string block. I only needed to make one block for January, but I was having so much fun, I ended up with four (though technically two of them were practice blocks!). Here they are:

Not perfect but still bright and cheery. Can I say though - that white strip? What a bugger it was to get it lined up perfectly (and clearly mine still aren't!). I tried pinning it in place but that didn't work so well. The tutorial suggests glue which I would definitely have tried - if only my resident munchkins hadn't made the glue sticks disappear.

Being a complete newbie to this whole bee thing, I was a bit worried my blocks weren't quite up to scratch. Exactly how perfect do these things need to be? I'll admit now I can be a bit of a haph-hazard quilter - which works great for me - so long as I'm consistent in my haph-hazardness! But when I need to mix that with other people's work (that is probably way more precise than mine), well I get a little nervy. Not to worry - the QCA girls were all very lovely and encouraging and Erin is happy to use all four blocks!

These were very fun (and a bit addictive!) to make. The tutorial for them can be found here at the Film in the Fridge blog. While you're there, have a look at the gorgeous string quilt made from Ruby (love that line!). Maybe I'll add that to my "some day" quilting list...