Be Free Bees: Addition #2 for Fiona

Because we had a member drop out of the free form quilt robin, I volunteered to pick up the slack and work on 2 quilts/month for the remainder of our quilt bee. The next quilts I have will be my last!

So, this month, I kept Fiona’s quilt, which I added to last month as well. Last month, I added a row of 3-part equilateral triangles to one side of the quilt.

When I went back to this project, I tried to approach it as if I were seeing the quilt for the first time. I wanted to be inspired by the project in its current state. I liked how the triangles I added last month made a secondary chevron or zig zag pattern, so that is the direction I decided to go. Since I used only solids last time, I decided to incorporate some prints this round. When I started working on this quilt, we were still in Bozeman, so I visited a local quilt shop and picked up a couple geometric prints that had the same feel as the pixel print used in the starter piece of the quilt. I surrounded them with the solids I already had and made 3 rows of chevrons.

I originally planned to make the zig zag pattern span the length of the quilt, but I ran out of solid. Since the pieces was about as long as the center piece of the quilt, I decided I would add to each end, and use the Kona bone and coal that were already in the quilt as background. I went back to the quilt shop, this time picking a couple of flowers that I thought would work well with the flowers that were in the original piece and one of the additional borders that was added. I ordered the Kona solids and they were waiting for me when I arrived home Thursday.

I fussy cut a couple of flowers for each side and started out with them as the center of a log cabin block. From there, I just had fun with some improvisational piecing to fill in the background on each side.

Though it wasn’t even in my original plan, I really like how those side portions turned out. I perhaps got a little over-ambitious on this addition, as it’s pretty large relative to the size of the quilt when I started. It is interesting how sometimes a project can go in a direction you didn’t anticipate and still turn out great. I hope Fiona likes it!