You may remember my post a couple months ago about a new bee I’m in, The Traveling Quilts. Well, we were going to keep our quilt additions a secret to surprise the bee member at the end of the year. That lasted about 3 weeks. LOL So now that we are NOT keeping things a surprise anymore, I can share with you!

For round 1, I received the below blocks from Jacquie from Tallgrass Prairie Studio.

She started her quilt using bright colors and improvisational piecing. My additions are at the top of this post. I continued her use of purple and small punches of bright colors. I am really happy with how they turned out, and now they are in the hands of Ashley to continue the quilt top. I have Penny’s quilt blocks now and can’t wait to share what I’m working on for Round 2!

Phew – it has not been the best few days. I was out for the count with the flu. I guess I learned my lesson about not getting a flu shot! I’m happy to report that I am now well into recovery mode and was able to spend a bit of time at my sewing machine today.

I am very excited to share these star blocks that I made before getting sick. They will be my start to The Traveling Quilts. This is a new bee of 11 quilters. We each start our own quilts with a theme of our choice and then mail the blocks to the next quilter in the rotation. They add to the quilt, only posting a sneak peek, and then mail everything to the next quilter on the list. The last person to receive the blocks does the final quilt top assembly and quilting and in a year, you receive your surprised finish quilt back! Obviously this is a sort of bee that you would want to do with people you know pretty well.

It’s really fun to think about the journey across the country these blocks are about to take – from here in Illinois to Vermont to North Carolina to Hawaii to California to Oregon to Oregon to Oregon (Ha!) to Washington to Colorado to Illinois and then back home to me! PHEW!

The theme I chose was “Constellation” and I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with. I used some great tutorials online for my blocks: Scrap Jar Stars, Lone Starburst and Wonky Stars.

Along with our quilt starts, we are sending journals for everyone to add to as they grow our quilts. I found this great one on Etsy – the front is a map of the midwest. How appropriate is that?

Have fun on your travels little quilt! See you next year!