BEE Finished!

     Dare I say that I have been "busy as a bee"?  I have finished the lap quilt from the Bee You line from Henry Glass & Co fabrics.  It was so much fun to work on these cute little prints.  

    I am very happy with the black background floral print as my setting triangles.  It is a nice contrast to the other softer color prints.  It also allowed me to "extend" the black into the border so that I could make a larger quilt.  I did sneak in that darker shade of yellow that is not part of the fabric line, to add a bit of variety and coordinate with the darker yellow in the background print.  I always think that adding another fabric adds a bit of "life" to the project and makes the fabric group shine.

    This project really spoke to my mantra "It is all in having the right tools".  I used the Creative Grids Hexagon Trim Tool to cut the hexi and half hexi shapes.  You need to partner that with the 60 degree triangle for the background triangles.  In place of the triangle ruler, I used the "A" template from the 6" Scrap Crazy Template Set.  It is also a sixty degree triangle and it is the perfect size to work with the 8" finished hexagons.  Clipping all three corners on those setting triangles made the pieces go together perfectly.  I was concerned about the rows matching up, but a generous spray of sizing before I cut and the geometry built into the rulers, and those points are perfect!  I do mean perfect!  There are a few hundred points in that quilt and there are only a few that are off by a single stitch.  As my Grandmother would say "A blind man would be glad to see those"!

    I will admit that the differential feed on my BERNINA 770 was extremely helpful in bringing those points together.  Once again, it is all about having the right tools.

    I chose a simple butterfly design for the all-over quilting pattern.  That was stitched with a soft yellow thread.  Yellow enough to be interesting, but not so bright that you see the thread before you see the fabrics and design.

   There were several fabric prints that I didn't use in this quilt.  One is the border print and another was the tossed hexagon print.  Both are very cute, but not suitable for the quilt project.  While my Handi Quilter was stitching away, I put together a quick table runner.  

    I cut two identical pieces of border print, about 18" long.  Between those I stitched what would be the equivalent of a fat quarter of the tossed hexagon print.  Press the seams and you are done!  I added the runner to the Handi Quilter to use up the extra backing fabric.  I reduced the scale of the butterfly quilting design and let the Handi Quilter do its thing.  A little black binding on both pieces closed the book on these projects.

    But wait... there is more!  The hexi block print fabric was just begging to be a matching tea towel.  I just happened to have a black tea towel from Studio e, so I trimmed, folded, stitched and added a bit of ribbon trim to the towel.  Just for fun, I ran a straight stitch about 1 1/2" above the bottom hem.  Then I cut the bottom hem off and fringed the bottom of the towel to create a decorative edge.  I think this set is going to "bee" an extra holiday gift for one of my girls.  I guess I was doing holiday sewing after all!