I was late to the sign up for the 4×5 Quilt Bee this quarter, so the group filled. However, I managed to be first on the waiting list, and so when a spot opened up in Hexagon group (block must incorporate a hexagon in some way) I knew that my Multiples of 3 block would be a good fit.

The mailing deadline is today, so I’m thrilled to have these finished to send off to their new homes.

Pink, green, and gray with white background for Tsoniki.

Aqua, lime and brown with cream background for Melissa.

Purple, green and gray with gray background for Hannah.

Pink, green and navy with white background Jenn.

Turquoise, iris and apple green with white background for Rhonda.

I hope these ladies enjoy their blocks, and I’m looking forward to some happy mail soon with block in lime, tangerine, and lemon yellow. I eventually plan to make a picnic blanket that folds up into its own pocket with these blocks.

I’m linking up with Finish It Up Friday (even though it’s Saturday!).

This was the last month of the free form quilt robin that started way back in January.

Because one of our group members had to drop out, this month, I had two quilts to add to before I sent them back to their owners, who had not seem them since sending them on their journeys at the beginning of the year.

First up: Thea.  The woman who had the penultimate addition did a really marvelous job of adding borders that nicely finished the quilt.  I was a little stumped at first because it seemed so well tied up that adding to the outside would have been like ripping the paper of a beautifully wrapped package that wasn’t mine.

Instead, I decided to make an addition to the interior of the quilt.  There were 4 open white spaces that surrounded the center.  In each one, I added 3 appliquéd circles and then finished it off with some hand stitching around each one.

Thea will be able to use this as a small accent quilt or a large wall hanging.  Or she can rip that package open (since it’s hers!) and make some additions and then finish it off again to make a larger quilt.

Jenny‘s starter piece was a series of pieced baskets.  In the subsequent months, her quilt became this wonderful, vibrant project full of bright colors and different prints.

I wanted to add something that would balance all the action that was taking place in the quilt already, so I opted for some letters to read “A-tisket A-tasket” (to tie into the basket theme) using mostly solid backgrounds.  I did some improvisational piecing with the letters, which was a new experience for me.  It was very challenging to depict the letters with curves and I was not on speaking terms with “s”, lowercase “e” and lowercase “a” for a few days.

When I placed the letters along the top edge of the quilt, I felt they were blending in too much with the fabrics below so I added a strip of white with some colored squares to break it up a bit.

I’m looking forward to seeing how all these projects finish up.  Meanwhile, I received my own quilt back for its journey.  I have already made one more addition of the grass at the bottom and I think I will also add a couple borders before finishing it.  Or maybe not.  I could just leave it as-is an let the binding be the border.  What do you think? 

Hey!  I suddenly realized that I had uploaded these photos and never shared these quilt blocks with you.  Too bad, because they turned out really cute.  Better late than never, right?

One of the members of another of the small groups in my Bee a {Modern} Swapper swap went missing.  Which meant, Shanna did not receive all her blocks in her queen bee month.  Our fearless leader asked for some volunteers to fill in the gaps, and I raised my figurative online hand.

Shanna wanted blocks with triangles as a component of the block in the colors yellow, aqua and gray.

For the second block, I was inspired by the addition I had just completed on Fiona’s Be Free Bees quilt.  I made six 3 parted equilateral triangles and put them together in a hexagon.  I love how this block turned out, and a tutorial has been requested.  I’m going to try and make that happen!

I’m interested to see what these look like with the rest of the blocks Shanna received!

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!

Since I finished this yesterday, I’m going to head over and show it at Sew And Tell Friday with Amy Lou Who.

As I mentioned in my last post, some extended time in the woods has pushed back the Road Trip Quilt Along tutorial for this week back a little bit.  I owe you Minnesota, and I will try to get that up by tomorrow afternoon.  We are traveling again today, but I hope to have some time this afternoon/evening to sew, take pictures, and write a tutorial.

Meanwhile, I thought I would share the first addition I made to Fiona’s quilt in our free form robin (we had a member drop out, so I am adding second addition to this same quilt this month).

This is what her quilt looked like when I received it:

The first element that inspired me in this quilt was the star that made up the center and was Fiona’s starter piece at the beginning of this quilt’s journey.  The points are composed of a 3-part equilateral triangle, and I decided to mimic that shape in my addition.

I also decided to stick with the theme of bright solids when I selected my fabrics.  Actually, I received this quilt when I was in the first part of our road trip, at my mom’s house.  Since I didn’t have all my fabric available to pull from, it meant a trip to the fabric store was in order.  Oh, darn. 

I drew an equilateral triangle on freezer paper that was larger than the originals, at 6-inches per side.  I divided it by drawing a line from each corner to the middle of the opposite side, and used those lines to create a template for the pieces I would be sewing together.  When I had completed a bunch of the 3-part triangles, I alternated their orientation to create a row that would be even with the current size of the quilt.

While I didn’t use exactly the same solids that were already present, the colors do coordinate nicely with the prints and solids that have been used so far.  And the white in my triangles is the same Kona bone that was used as the background on one of the side additions.

Here, you can see the comparison of the original triangles that inspired me and those made from the template I created.

Since I have this quilt for another round, I’ve tried to look at it with “fresh eyes” for my next addition and think about what I would have done, and what would have inspired me if I were seeing it for the first time.

The Be Free Bees are a quilt group of which I’m a part.  There are eight of us, and starting in January, we each sent a starter piece off in the mail.  Each month, we make an addition to the quilt we have for that month and then send it on to the next person to make an addition.  There are no rules for the addition, other than be inspired by what is already there.  At the end of 8 months, the quilt will be returned to the person who started it.

I posted my plan for my addition to this free form quilt some time ago, but I never shared the finished result.  The plan for this one came to me pretty easily and I wanted to echo the feeling of the star that was at the center of the quilt.

My addition is the arched portion at the top of the quilt in the following picture.  It’s construction was a little tricky.  I wanted to keep the angles of the center piece, which is an octagon, but I only wanted three sides of the shape.  As a result, each section of my addition had to be drawn separately, rather than making one template to copy for each portion.

I was going for the feeling of a star with my addition, but love how the mirror image on the right and left makes the addition actually look like an exotic flower.  I wish I could say that was intentional, but it was a happy accident.

Since the fabrics that had been used in previous additions were primarily batiks, I stuck with that theme.  The owner of this quilt included some pieces of the white batik that was her background fabric, but there wasn’t enough left to complete my addition.  A white solid was too harsh with the rest of the quilt, so I used Kona ash, a very light gray.

When I posted the picture of my addition, one of our group members said the quilt reminds her of a banner that should be hanging in a castle.