Finished: Flowers Over Falls - Simply Solids Bee Quilt

Yeah, I fell off the face of the earth again.  It's been a slice.  I'll spare you the details.

I have a few things I've been meaning to share and I'll get to them.  I truly want to catch up on all the things I've missed - and I have missed you all and your projects and your wit and your insights.  I have just been incredibly unplugged this summer, and I think that's a good thing. Back to teaching on Tuesday so I imagine my routines will start coming back slowly but surely. (And I owe more than a few emails....)

I HAVE managed to finish my Simply Solids Bee quilt.  June was my month and while one bee member dropped out, an awesome block friend from UK (Hi, Susan!) offered to make one for me.  SO cool!!

One must always have a tall person in the family - thanks, bro!

My concept for this quilt was the idea of flowers and twigs heading over a waterfall.  Each of my bee mates got two shades of blue, two squares of orange, a strip of tan (all Kona) and instructions to improv-piece an abstract block that measured 12.5 x 16.5". (See my post here for more details...)

And they did a beautiful job!!  I made the sashing strips and borders ( also improvised) from the scraps they sent back and spare yardage.

Then I sewed the top together - but in keeping with the improv/modern/abstract idea, I didn't use a traditional layout.  The layout actually looks like this:

All together, there are 7 blues (sky, aqua, baby blue, bahama blue, peacock, turquoise and teal), two oranges (mango and flame) and two neutrals (white and stone). There are only a few scraps of white. I tossed them in with the sky blue so that the sky blue looked blue and not white!

There was one block that I absolutely loved but try as I might, I couldn't make it work with the rest of the improv blocks.  It broke my heart until I figured I could showcase it on the back and actually build the back to echo that block.  The entire back is a reflection of that block and uses up all the leftover yardage.

It's quilted with watery lines in three shades of blue thread.

I matched the binding to the gradient I'd created with the blocks so that the quilt appears borderless.  And I'm really happy with how it turned out. To make it work, I used Flourishing Palms' french-style binding method with great success. (Thanks, Linda!)

This might be one of my favourite quilts of all time!  I'm chuffed to bits with how it turned out and I have my very talented bee mates to thank for it (though some of them wanted to kill me... Oops. :-).

Faux art-shot....  Does it look like water over rocks? hahahaha.

Flowers Over Falls is about 68x80" and contains the handiwork of the Aeneous Group of the Simply Solids Modern Bee and Susan of Canadian Abroad.

Thanks so much, you talented bunch, you!!  I'm glad I managed to get it finished for an upcoming show in October AND before my birthday today/yesterday (30th).

This is me at 35. And 35 feels lovely.