Not Your Mama's Bee ~ Triple Block Updates

Not Your Mama's Bee

This week is Spring Break in our school district. I thought it would be an appropriate week to catch everyone up on our Not Your Mama's Bee quilt blocks. I continue to have fun (and frustration) helping my kids sew their monthly bee blocks.

Not Your Mama's Bee

For my son's month, he requested some improv blocks. His inspiration was this Sunshine Quilt on the Deux Petites Souris Quilting with Intention blog. These blocks look possibly inspired by some of Denyse Schmidt's patterns. He requested blue fabric, white background, and pops of orange.

Not Your Mama's Bee

After the improv blocks, the bee jumped into pattern following. Lee's daughter requested flowers from Michelle Engel Benskoif's Amsterdam Quilt. If anyone thinks following a pattern with kids is easier than winging it, you think wrong. Haha :) It probably would have been easier if I had made this block before. They were a bit impatient as I was reading the pattern to figure out the next steps. But we were successful and the kids really enjoyed planning out the color and placements of fabrics.

Not Your Mama's Bee

Our latest bee blocks were for Jemellia's daughter. We had more fun with improvisation, using bright solids and black background fabric. These blocks are from Nydia Kehnle's Framework quilt pattern. In my son's words, "this block is AWESOME!"

Not Your Mama's Bee

As usual, the design phase was their favorite.

Not Your Mama's Bee

I think this one exhausted my daughter. She sews pretty much independently, but that means there is more seam ripping than when I used to help her. She gets frustrated faster when things aren't going smoothly - and it was just *one of those days* where the fabric was sliding and she was accidentally pulling the thread from the needle before starting. We persevered though! And I think the blocks turned out great!