The Honey Pot Bee – #SewRoyalBlock

I have a new tutorial to share with you that is pretty special! I’ve had this design percolating across the pages of my sketch book for the better part of a year. Finally, it bitch slapped me and decided it wanted to be made. When it comes down to it, who am I to argue with royalty? I need a new hat after all, and crowns never go out style!

As always, I need to preface the tutorial with a bit of a story. Even though I tend to design in a vacuum, and my sketch book is under lock and key, sometimes brilliant people have the same fabulous idea at the same time. When this happens, it really should be celebrated. The more people that come up with it, the better we all are for receiving it! (Plagiarism, is of course, a whole other story). That exact thing happened with this block. I designed the Sew Royal Block at the end of March 2016, as I was coming back from my holiday in San Francisco. There it sat in my sketch book like so many other designs, waiting for the right moment to make itself useful. When I finally got The Honey Pot Bee off the ground, I knew I wanted this to be a Wild Card Block as the theme was so fitting. At the beginning of January, I started making practice blocks. I finally shared one of these test blocks with a few members of my online quilt tribe, explaining that I was nearly ready to get it out there. Seriously, not a day later a similar crown block showed up on Cat’s (@hellofromcat) Instagram feed as something she had designed with the intentions of using at a the Makers Escape workshop later this year. Messages started rolling in from several friends asking what was going on. While the blocks were slightly different, it was so unusual to suddenly have two crown blocks available when there seemed hardly any the week before.

I reached out to Cat directly, with a stiletto raised, ready to splash martini in her face. Ha! As if I would waste a perfectly good martini!? Ladies, gentlemen, no. We both just chatted about the situation, had a good laugh, went “SNAP!” and then congratulated each other on being creative geniuses! There are plenty of queens in the world–trust me, I know a good handful myself!–to inherit the crowns from both of our block designs. I don’t believe her block design has been released yet, but when it does, know that we were both creating thoughts independent of each other, and I have the utmost respect for her.

Now about my version! My #SewRoyalBlock is so super easy, you’re gonna think, “Why did no one come up with this before?” I know! K.I.S.S. I always say! There are five steps, but it really amounts to cutting the fabric, making some HSTs, making split QSTs, and then sewing it all together. However, this block has a twist!

No two crowns are ever the same right? Well, this tutorial allows for the ultimate flexibility in “making it your own.” This basic version shows how to make a crown with a solid band that runs around it, as shown in the first image. But what if you want to add diamonds? Or silver? Maybe some swirls? A mosaic of tiny shells. Fur linings would be good, too. Big giant rubies, or your own birthstone! There are so many possibilities, and I want you to use your own imagination and skills (I know you’ve got them) to create something truly unique. You have a 3″ x 8.5″ space to decorate however you see fit. (This is the size of the unfinished stripe section that is included in the tutorial below). You could even make the crown taller, or shorter, wider, or bigger if you needed to add some more flair! Don’t let my tutorial get in the way of your imagination: use it to spark it instead!

Tutorial

Step One

Step Two

Step Three

Step Four

Step Five

Diagrams are not necessarily to scale.