Tag: bee

Meet the Calico Needlers

October 22, 2021 /

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Table of contents

The Calico Needlers Quilt Guild meets in Saint Peters, Missouri at the St. Charles Library. This day-time guild meeting starts bright and early at 9:30.

Even so, the room was filled with friendly quilters.

The Calico Needlers Quilt Guild is a fun group of quilters!

Everything about this event was smooth sailing! I am grateful for their kind welcome and hospitality and the ease of setting up everything from technology to hauling my wares!

For starters, each guild program presentation begins with selfies of the group. I am currently without my selfie stick, so disregard the mop of gray at the bottom of these pics!

image of Calico Needlers
It’s always a “Good Morning” when it starts with guild!

Likened to eating dessert first, we had the program straight away.

Image of Calico Needlers
Enthusiastic quilters!

In Our Quilting Journeys, I challenge quilters to ponder their own journeys.

Take a quiet moment, maybe over a cup of coffee or tea, to think about who has influenced your quilting journey.

First, many quilters have family quilters who either directly or indirectly expose us to the craft. In other words, “we get it honestly”!

Furthermore, our quilting journeys are influenced by many things, like shops we frequent (they choose what we see), friends, emails, sales, free shipping offers, retreats, and even Show and Tell!

There’s never a wrong reason for making a quilt!

As expected, much of the program is dedicated to sharing my quilting journey, which I often refer to as a “very curvy quilting journey”. With the newest curve in my journey being repeat pattern design, I remembered just days before the presentation a big influencer on the latest curve of my journey: Tula Pink.

Several years ago, at the Fall Paducah Quilt Show, fabric designer Tula Pink was the featured guest. We were fortunate to get tickets to “An Evening with Tula”. When Tula began her talk, she announced she was going to tell us the process of how she designs fabric. I guess I had been thinking about it back then because I took out pen and paper and made notes. She mentioned she uses Adobe Illustrator, a vector software for digitizing her designs.

Later, when I needed to update my laptop, I told the computer guys I would be getting Adobe Illustrator. I didn’t have a clue what it was or how incredibly powerful and involved this software was. But it was in my Tula notes!

Sometimes we are surprised by the memories we gain by quiet reflection.

The power point/trunk show continued with pattern quilts and what influenced me to make them.

The Calico Needlers meeting continued on, with business and pleas for volunteers – a common thread amongst guilds. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to stick around for Show and Tell, my favorite part of any guild meeting! But I must say these quilters were most helpful and gracious to me as a speaker. Aren’t quilters the best?

While in the area, I made a stop to Batiks Plus and, eureka, I found a gem!

Hidden away, under another bolt of fabric was this bolt of Crystalia, the Hoffman digital spectrum fabric used in my original Phoebee pattern! Phoebee is the gal that started it all and helped me discover how to use BOTH beautiful sides!

Image of Fabric Bolt
Phoebee Focus Fabric Kit – limited quantities!
Image of Bee Quilt
Phoebee Quilt Pattern

See more about Designing for Hoffman Fabrics HERE.

Read more about Phoebee HERE.

A special note of gratitude to the quilt holder gals! You did a great job!

Finally, a big thanks to my new friends in Saint Peters!

Remember to enjoy YOUR quilting journey, Karla

image of bee quilt

Phoebee Goes to Market!

November 12, 2018 /

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Table of contents

This is the story of how Phoebee for Hoffman began.

Phoebee, designed for Hoffman California Fabrics, was my first experience designing a pattern for a fabric company. I’d wondered for a few years what it would be like to collaborate with a fabric company. I never dreamed it would be this fun!

Starting on August 3, at 3:47 p.m., I opened two packages of 21 fabrics  from Hoffman California Fabrics company. 

Image of fabric to make Phoebee for Hoffman
Fabrics from Hoffman California Fabrics.

First and foremost, for the next six hours, I auditioned “Phoebee for Hoffman” fabrics trying to get just the right mix of color, contrast, values, and feel that would be worthy of this new line by Hoffman California Fabrics.

Well, Electric Garden rocks! Vibrant color with a soft, contrasting reverse side was just the recipe I needed. I flipped several backgrounds to their reverse as well, so they wouldn’t compete with the bee or flowers. The next step was cutting out Phoebee and her flowers.

Image of Quilt on Clothesline
Image of Phoebee Quilt
Image of Phoebee for Hoffman

I slept on this mix so I could get a fresh look the next morning. Yes!

Immediately, I began fusing and quilting (on my Handiquilter Avante) right away. Next came the prairie point hanging method, binding, label, photos, writing and producing the pattern, and Phoebee was flying to California on Tuesday, August 7th!

Image of Quilt in Frame
Image of Back of Quilt

My new friend in California let me know Phoebee for Hoffman arrived safely!

Image of Phoebee at Quilt Market
Phoebee 2.0 in the Hoffman booth at market!
Image of Electric Garden
Phoebee 2.0 pictured in the Projects Catalog

Quilt Market in Houston was a big debute for Phoebee. I was fortunate that several kind quilter souls saw her hanging in the Hoffman California Fabric booth and shared their pics with me on Instagram! Thank you, friends! 

In addition to quit shops across America, I am shipping Phoebee 2.0 patterns to a very fun quilt shop in Canada!

See more quilt patterns designed for Hoffman California Fabrics HERE!

Original Phoebee and Phoebee 2.0 quilt patterns are available in my Etsy Shop HERE.

Image of Bee Quilt
Phoebee Quilt Pattern

Catch The BUZZ! FOLLOW on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest!

Enjoy your quilting journey!

Image of Quilt with Bee.
Phoebee was designed using both sides of a focal fabric.

Designing Quilts by Chance

June 20, 2017 /

In this quilt, I used the front AND reverse side of its focal fabric.

How do you design a quilt? Do you use graph paper and draw out the design with exact proportions? Do you use color pencils or do you label the drawn areas with the colors of fabric or values you’ll use? Do you use a quilt design software or a tablet quilt design app?

Yeah…not me.  A quilt often comes to life in my head… very vaguely, kind of like a mystery unfolding.  I ponder the idea until I start to pull fabrics from my stash and start cutting, drawing, and stitching. At least, that’s how Phoebee came to life.

Image of Quilt with Bee.

Phoebee was designed using both sides of a focal fabric.

Phoebee began with a vague idea to use pieced scraps from my stash for the background and use a bee as the main design. That’s about all I knew.  I thought I wanted to use multiple fabrics for the bee as well. I knew the shape I wanted to draw out for my bee, but I wanted to get my background set first for size.

I did use graph paper in my process, but it was after I stitched my pieces together and decided I liked the look. That’s when I wrote down the dimensions and drew the shapes out, labeling which fabrics I used. I used a pencil because my drawings and placement of fabric changed several times in the process.

Once I was happy with the background, I made all my notes and could hardly wait to grab fabrics to design the bee.

NOTE: I don’t clean up ANYthing while I’m in creating mode — I just let it flow and fabric is everywhere!

So here I was, sitting on my floor (because my design wall was {and still is, truth be told} full of a bed-size quilt in progress), trying out fabrics, figuring out how to combine them to make an interesting bee, when one fabric just kept jumping out at me. I finally gave in and decided to use it alone for my bee. That fabric looked really good against the pieced background.

But something was missing. I liked the bee. I liked the background. There needed to be another element – something of surprise or interest and something to “ground” the bee somehow. I moved the extra fabrics aside and accidentally turned the “bee (focal)  fabric” upside down — now THAT was interesting! To use the reverse side of the focal fabric for the flowers the bee was pollinating was exactly what this quilt needed to make sense, be unique, and complete the “story”.

Image of Full Quilt with Bee

Phoebee means bright, pure in Greek.

Phoebee means BRIGHT,  PURE in Greek and she is both! I happened to use a color-dense Hoffman Spectrum Digital floral print for the bee, the flowers and the binding, but any floral, big or small would work which makes this a great stash-busting quilt.

I like the idea that Phoebee is vibrant and the flowers are softer in value as the bee is getting its life from the flowers.

I’m excited to finish writing this pattern and I have hazy plans in my head brewing  of additional designs using pieced backgrounds and one floral focal fabric.

Image of Prairie Point Hanging Method

Prairie Point Quilt Hanging Method

Notice the Prairie Point Hanging Method (click here for details)

Sign up and get an email when my next post goes live!

For more information about free-hand stylized quilting, visit my The Quilting Bee page.

Karla’s Design Story

 

 

© 2024 Creative Bee Studios

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑