Yesterday afternoon I was hanging this quilt up on my rain gutter on the side of my house (for my third round attempt at a decent photo) and a lady was walking by with her young children. She stopped to ask me if I made the quilt. It turns out she is a quilter, too, and new to the neighborhood. We chatted a little bit and I invited her to our little neighborhood quilting group next month! What a fun surprise to meet yet another quilting friend on my street. So, maybe it IS good that I am the crazy quilt lady in the neighborhood trying to get that one decent shot of the quilt for the old blog. :)
I made this quilt for my friend (and yet another neighbor) Mary, with the help of my lovely Two's Company Bee members. Thanks so much, ladies!! I couldn't have done it without you! It turned out to be such a bright and happy quilt, don't you think?
I requested red, aqua and white maverick stars, and I got such a beautiful variety of blocks back. Each bee member so graciously added a few of their own fabrics in their block, which helped make this a scrappier quilt. Just what I was after! If you ask me, this is THE PERFECT bee block. It's easy, it doesn't use a ton of fabric, each person can add their own personality, but the blocks are still unified with all the others in the end. That's just my 2 cents. :)
I pieced the back, of course. The center print was in my stash and it was wide enough to cover the width of the quilt with a few inches to spare. There was just enough leftover after trimming to add a strip or two to my scrap bucket. Sweet! I added a solid aqua and a white and blue dot for the rest. I LOVE this back!
I stippled the quilt in white thread and machine bound it (yay!) with this leaf print. Instead of using my normal warm and natural batting, (I didn't want the flecks to show through all the light fabrics), I used some Fairfied 80/20 batting that I had on hand. It has no flecks, but it has a higher loft. That made me nervous, because I was afraid of puckers. (Been there, done that!) All went well with the quilting, thankfully, and after washing, the loft settled down just a touch so it is the perfect thickness. Unfortunately, one of the stars bled (boo-hoo), but with all the variety of reds, I guess I wasn't surprised. (Yes, I did use a color catcher, but it didn't help.) It really didn't bother me too much. Like we say a lot in our house, "It is what it is." :)
The quilt measures 60" x 72", which is a perfect lap quilt. I gave it to Mary yesterday, (which was so fun!!!) and she loved it. Hurray!