Just not me!

February's Brit Bee package was eagerly awaited from Jennie.  Jennie is an architect, so what would it be?  Cute wonky house blocks?  Or maybe something more structural like Jacquie's awesome Building Bridges? Oh no no no no.  Jennie wanted faces, and not any old faces, the Bee's (old) faces!

My reaction?  And I quote, "WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

This is Ms Feb's inspiration; as far as I know, none of Brit Bee sport a beard!

I was not happy.  I really hate having my photo taken, and the thought of having my face on a quilt, I find quite frankly disturbing!  I am not good at doing arty-art.  Graphics, straight lines, angles, block colour, I can do that, portraits, no.

But it's Jennie's month; so desperate not to be defeated, and in my usual manner of charging ahead, (no pun intended!), I found one of the only decent pictures of me not in a wedding dress and wearing a tiara, and got to work.

Jennie had suggested using Photoshop, but I don't have that; hubby is the whiz, and that's the way we like it, so I headed online instead.  For now Picnic is the place to go, (there are other sites, so come April, should any of you crazies want to replicate this later in the year, you will be able to find an alternative).

Uploading my picture, clicking on the 'Posterize' effect changed me from this...

Bar Il Molo, Varenna, Lake Como, Italy.  I recommend the pizza!

...to this...

Much better!

Then I headed from a point where my 'comfort zone' was already a distant memory, to somewhere decidedly downhill and around the corner from there.  I had to get the image to a fabric block.

Enter freezer paper, Bondaweb and lots and lots of swearing.

I printed the image onto the freezer paper, cut out the fewest number of pieces possible and then ironed them onto corresponding black, cream and white cotton.  Cutting all the tricky curves, making sure that the pieces were all going to overlap a little and go back together was tricky enough.

Top tip and the benefit of hindsight - fellow Bees, if you are using Bondaweb, iron it to the back of the fabric BEFORE you cut out your face out.  Trying to attach (old crumpled) Bondaweb to small pieces without ruining your new iron, only leads to ruining your ironing board cover instead; trust me, I know.

Frustration!  These were heading for the bin, but I calmed down enough to flatten them out and proceed.

So then I reassembled my face as best as I could and pressed it all into place.  Jennie wanted a background that represented each of us... what else could I do!?

To this point, NO SEWING.  That was not right.  I had to sew something!  So on to the transformation into Bride of Frankenstein!

It was whilst using my machine's applique stitch that I managed to sew right through my left index finger, rendering the air blue, needle unusable and an abrupt end to a rather frustrating day!

It is now a nice shade of purple!

But the block is now complete and ready to post back to Jennie, and it'll either give her a fright or a very good laugh...

I tried.  I learnt many things, my children learnt new words, I don't think I'll be doing do it again!

I can't wait to see what the rest of the Britain's Most Wanted quilt looks like!