Busy Bees Quilt – Part 1 Design – From My Carolina Home

Back in June, I was asked to participate in showing a demo at our guild area on rulers. We had four members showing different rulers. Members divided into groups, and shifted tables every 15 minutes. It was a fun program for the members. My demo was on the 60º ruler, which makes a hexagonal table topper. After the demo, I finished sewing the topper, then was wondering what I could do with it. I didn’t need another table topper, and these have not sold well at the shop or Fiber Fair. I thought it was a reader on a blog post (but I couldn’t find it) who said why not use it as the center of a quilt? Well, that is an interesting idea!

The first thing I needed to do was add corner pieces to make it into a rectangular medallion. But, the ends are not squares, so I ended up cutting oversize rectangles and sewing them on.

Lining up the straight side, I cut away the excess from the background piece.

I did this on both sides.

Then, making sure the ruler was straight, and leaving a seam allowance, I cut the excess across the top.

I did the same on the other end.

I added additional background strips to the sides, and top/bottom in different widths so both dimensions ended up with an even number plus 1/2-inch.

Now, what to do? I don’t often design with pencil and graph paper, but this time I did. I couldn’t get EQ8 to understand and this was just faster. The only thing I knew at this point was I didn’t want any stars. Pinwheels sounded good, so I slotted those in. Then, I thought about putting just a few flying geese in the final border. In a fit of ambition, I thought, why not put flying geese all the way around? I have been looking for more complex designs. This is it!

I started making half square triangle blocks from the black bee print fabric and the white background. These are 4-1/2-inches, making the pinwheels 8-1/2-inches.

Assembling the pinwheels

Pressing well, I spin the seams to reduce bulk.

I started laying them out, to be sure I knew how many I would need. Ultimately, I made ten pinwheels. The background fabric between the pinwheels had to be calculated as I went, as the sides were different than the top and bottom.

Eventually, I assembled the next section round robin style.

OK, let’s start making flying geese! For some reason, unfathomable, I calculated that I would need 160 of them. I cut the white squares to do the no-waste method. I took these to the den, and marked lines while watching TV.

I did these in batches, so I could vary what I was sewing instead of doing the same step across all of them at once. I pinned a bunch at one time, then sewed those. There are several bee prints with backgrounds in yellow and grey.