Cottage Quilting Bee: Emily the Strange Quilt Block

I've gotten some questions about what a virtual quilting bee is, so let me take a moment to explain. Basically, a group of individuals agree to participate for a year and each person is assigned one month. My month comes in October. What happens is I will pick out some fabrics and a quilt theme/style, then divide up the fabric so that each person will receive a little parcel in the mail with fabric and instructions. My fellow bee-mates will then sew up a nice quilt block for me and send it back. So, when it is not my month to send out fabric, I receive little parcels of fabric from the other bee-mates and complete blocks for them. Tina, over at Little Blue Cottage is our fearless organizer and is our distributor and receiver of fabrics and quilt blocks. With the Cottage Quilting Bee, the are actually more than twelve people so some of the months will have two people sending out fabric. March is one of those months.

Emily The Strange
Viv selected sent out some dark fabrics and included some lovely little pictures of Emily. I was not familiar with Emily The Stange, but have since learned she is a "counterculture icon." Wikipedia describes her as a character that began to surface on stickers at concerts to promote a company called Cosmic Debris. She's 13 years old and has an affinity for black cats. Here is what I came up with:




When Viv suggested incorporating hearts, I jumped at the chance to try making a pretty heart block Jacquie of Tallgrass Prairie Studio designed. My hearts were on a much smaller scale, but her tutorial was very helpful.



Emily the Strange.

I am looking forward to seeing all the blocks together in a quilt. My bee-mates were very creative and pulled out all the stops with reverse applique, embroidery, and buttons. Take a look at our flicker page.

In other news, I found a fabulous local quilting shop today! I love shopping for fabric online, but have been looking for a fun little shop to use. Glad Creations is a shop in the Powderhorn Park neighborhood of Minneapolis. They have an extraordinarily large selection of fabrics and supplies in a small space. Upstairs classes and social sewing events are held. The staff there was also very friendly and helpful. They were busy helping customers select fabrics and cutting the entire time I was there. I was happy to see that they carry quite a bit of Moda and a really nice big selection of Kaffe Fassett. I got a selection of Basic Grey's urban couture line. There are several other shops I would like to visit, but they are out in the suburbs and I wanted a quick trip today. I will definitely be heading back to Glad Creations.