A great advantage to following quilters on Instagram, is that you are made aware of online sewing bees :)
I joined this one called Modern Instabee.
I belong to Hive 11.
You have to buy this book to participate, but I love the book so that wasn't a problem.
You can watch a short video about the book here.
If you want to see the blocks all the hives are creating for the bee, go to Instagram and look for #moderninstabee2014 and #moderninstabeehive11.
If you are interested in joining, follow Lindsaysews (Lindsay Conner), she is the author of the book and the queen bee :)
Each of the quilters involved in the bee chooses a month,
mine's October :)
You then choose the block you would like the other quilters in your hive to make for you.
You tell them what colors, or send them fabric to make it if you are very particular.
February's block was the Stacked Windmills block, for Sarah.
You can display a photo of the fabrics you are going to use in the block and have them approved first, if you want to.
It's not necessary though.
Look at this different method of making half square triangles.
Sew around two pieces of fabric, using a l/4" S/A.
Then you cut 2 lines diagonally with your rotary cutter.
Then you simply press the half square triangles open.
It's amazing all the techniques there are in quilting!
We're not quite finished.....each square needs to be squared up.
Look at all the trimmings!
Make sure all of your half square triangles are all in the right order.
Sarah requested bright spring colors such as orange, blue, green, yellow, red and a hint of pink.
We could only choose 4 prints for this block, with a white background.
Here is the completed block, I think it looks really pretty!
The stacked windmill blocks look really different when they are placed side by side in a quilt.
I'm thinking about choosing this block for my month :)