A Year of Pink!

Courthouse Steps Block for the final block in the Pink Bee 2019!

A year ago, I joined my very first online quilting bee, along with 11 other ladies, sewing pink quilt blocks for one another.  Over the course of the year, each of us would take our turn as Queen Bee and select the block we wished to have all the bee members sew and send us.  The final Queen in our bee, Yvonne, selected the Courthouse Steps block for us to sew for her.  This particular version finishes at 14" and is quick to sew from 2.5" strips.  Knowing that Yvonne is a fan of fussy cuts, I opted to include a couple of cute ones from the designer, Sarah Jane from her line: Children At Play.


Now, my plan from the start of this quilting bee, has been to sew two blocks each month - one to send and one for me to keep.  I wanted my own version of each block so that I could create a sampler quilt that will be a reminder of the year spent sewing beautiful pink blocks with friends!

The block I made to keep, had to be altered so that it would finish at 12", as this is the size of my blocks in my sampler.  I simply used a 3.5" square for the center of my block and then continued adding strips that are cut at 2" to surround the center square.

Two Courthouse Steps Blocks. The larger one finishes at 14", the smaller finishes at 12".

With the finish of this final block of the year, I pulled out all the pink bee blocks I have sewed, along with the 11 blocks sewn and sent by my bee mates, to layout my sampler quilt!

A peek at the different bee blocks I sewed each month, destined to become a sampler quilt!

I am so pleased that I managed to keep up with my bee blocks, through the year - despite our moving three times in 2019.  All that moving meant that I would sew my blocks with what I had on hand and then tuck the finished blocks into a plastic storage container.  I decided that I would wait until the end of the bee, before laying my blocks out - to let my anticipation for this project build!

Although I enjoyed sewing each month's block (it was like doing a mystery quilt, as I had no idea ahead of time, which block that month's Queen Bee would select), I did have one block that I questioned my fabric choices.

Guess what?  That turned out to be the block that stood out - like a beacon - from the rest of my blocks. Whoops. Can you spot it in the photo below? 👀




Well, knowing that I wouldn't be happy keeping that block in with the others, I decided to make a second version for my quilt.  That first one is destined to become a different finished project.

Layer Cake Block designed by Lori Holt and given as a free tutorial on her blog.

Whew.  Second time around and I'm very pleased with the results! Still very scrappy and better suited to the overall colour scheme of my sampler.



Seeing the blocks, side by side, it's pretty obvious that I had lost my vision for my sampler quilt when I selected fabrics for that first version!

Proof that you can't have too much cake!😍

A suitable replacement block meant that I could get going on adding sashing strips and corner stones between my blocks.  It's very exciting seeing my Pink Bee Sampler Quilt come together!

Edited to Add:

  For those interested in this online quilt bee I am participating in, you can check out all our blocks on Instagram under the hashtag... #pinkbee2019