Support Your Bees with a Whimsy Honey Bee Quilt!

I love bees! And while not a beekeeper, I had my own personal honey bee hive. Unfortunately, it was in the eave of my house. It took a while to find a beekeeper who will relocate it safely due to the hive being in the eaves plus the distance from the ground. I will miss them in my flowers but they have  a new home in an actual hive.Whimsy Honey Bee Quilt Phyllis Dobbs

I had created a whimsy fabric collection “Bee Yourself” to celebrate bees that included fabrics plus a panel of 12 bee blocks – honey bee, spelling bee, busy bee, fashion bee, beach bee, worker bee, quilting bee, sewing bee, queen bee, bee yourself and others.  This is a whole cloth “cheater quilt” I designed based on my fabric collection “Bee Yourself”.

This quilt is in my Spoonflower fabric shop and is made from the same art. The size is 36″ x 42″ and is available as a yard of fabric. It’s ready to sew into a quilt. You can also use it as a quilt panel to create a focal point in a larger quilt by adding borders. I know you will be able to come up with other uses as well.

Coordinating bee fabrics are available in my Spoonflower shop and I also have the bee panel and other fabrics available direct from my studio.

Love your bees and protect them!

Phyllis

Free Patterns for Bee Yourself Fabrics

Bee Yourself” fabrics that I designed for Quilting Treasures shows bees in their favorite hobbies.  There is a bee for everyone! I’ve talked about the fabric collection in prior posts, but want to let you know about some free patterns for “Bee Yourself”. Quilting Treasures has several patterns that I designed with this fabric collection, available for free download on their website.  With these 4 patterns, there is plenty of inspiration and sewing for you.

Free Pattern Bee Yourself Quilt Quilting Treasures

This “Bee Yourself” quilt is 53″ x 65″ inches in size with multi borders.  The blocks are pieced using the bee blocks in the panel fabric, surrounded by the black “words” fabric to make the blocks “pop”.

Bee Yourself Table Runner free pattern from Quilting Treasures

This table runner will add a delightful touch to your table or chest.  The finished size is 66″ x 18″.

Bee Yourself Tote Bag and Placemats

Create a tote bag to carry your quilt or sewing projects to your guild meetings or classes, or use for shopping to show off which “bee” you are. This free tote bag pattern is a great size – 16″ w x 10 1/2″ h x 5 1/2″ d. In addition, this placemat can add some fun as well as color to your table setting. The size is 19 1/2″ x 14 3/4″ and has instructions and yardage for making in sets of 2.

These patterns are in 2 downloadable pdf’s – one with the quilt instructions and the other with the instructions for the placemat, table runner, and tote bag.

To see these projects on display at the 2012 Fall International Quilt Market in Houston last October, read about it on my prior post about Quilt Market.  But this is not all – you can see some other “Bee Yourself” projects that were displayed at Quilt Market.  I will have the decorative pillow, apron, pot holders and smaller tote bag posted here shortly.

“Sew,” while the weather is cold and chilly, you can have fun sewing and quilting with these patterns!

Hugs,

Phyllis

New “Bee Yourself” Fabrics are the Buzz!

Fall International Quilt Market is almost here! I love Quilt Market and am looking forward to the trip to Houston next week. And I’m especially excited because I have a new fabric collection debuting with Quilting Treasures and wanted to give you a sneak peak at them. “Bee Yourself” features 12 blocks of happy “bee-isms” along with coordinating fabrics.

Bee Yourself Fabric Blocks Phyllis Dobbs

When I started designing a fabric collection all about bees, the first thing I thought of after I got past the fuzzy bee itself was “Quilting Bee” and then “Sewing Bee”. After these popped into my head, it formed the whole concept of the collection. I thought of many more bees to incorporate as I created the illustrations for the blocks, including “Honey Bee”, “Worker Bee”, “Spelling Bee”, “Queen Bee”, “Bee in a Bonnet”, “Fashion Bee”, “Just Bee Cause”, “Busy Bee”, “Bee Mine”, and the title bee, “Bee Yourself”. In “beeing” yourself, you can be any bee you want to be.

Bee yourself fabric collection Phyllis Dobbs Quilting Treasures

It was really fun to create all these bees. The ideas just kept coming and I have an almost endless list of more “bees”. My brother and sister-in-law jumped in with suggestions of their favorite bee-isms. I am thrilled with how the collection turned out and am now sewing and quilting several bee projects for Quilt Market.

The fabrics will be ready to ship to the stores in December, a good time to snuggle up with a sewing or quilting bee and become a busy bee during the cold weather. (Ok, I quit with the bee-isms!)

I will be posting some free patterns here shortly with fun ways to use “Bee Yourself”. Quilting Treasures will also have some free project patterns available on their website when the fabrics are out. I will update you when all the patterns are available.

Schoolhouse Houston Quilt Market

If you are attending Quilt Market, which is open to the trade only, I want to invite you to attend my Schoolhouse event on Saturday afternoon at 4:55 in room 362D. I will be presenting some great ideas and there will be a free gift for everyone. I hope to see some of you there.

I will also be in Gutermann of America’s booth (#537) a bunch of the time and would love to meet you so please stop by. Some “Bee Yourself” projects will be in their booth as well as in Quilting Treasures’ booth (#1056).

Have a great day and “bee yourself”!

Phyllis