back to my childhood! bee quilt finish

You all remember the 1970s right? Everything was neon bright, yellows, oranges, lime green? Ok, maybe some of you don't remember. You young things, you! But the rest of you know what I'm talking about. In the early 70s I was that preteen girl who wore smiley faces (for you young kids, you would call this an emoji) on her t-shirts. One year I was a smiley face for Halloween! Wish I had a picture of THAT! We moved into a new house when I was in the fifth grade. My bedroom was perfect, bright yellow walls, built in bookshelves under the eves. Everything was perfect EXCEPT for the butterfly wallpaper on the front wall. Yuck. It was very girly and not my style. 

One day, I asked my mom (please note she was on the telephone and distracted at the time) "if I tear down that ugly wallpaper, will you paint my wall orange while I'm at camp?" Not hearing me at all, she waved her hand at me, "yeah yeah" and went back to her call. That was all I needed! I ran upstairs and 15 minutes later I was back with armloads of ripped up wallpaper. That got her attention! But, she had promised. When I returned from camp a couple weeks later, my wall was bright orange.

Mom also helped me acquire an orange shag rug and a bright geometric quilt for my bed. She even painted my desk bright yellow. I was a happy girl.

40+ years and a generation later, both of my older kids LOVE orange (Steve had us paint his bedroom wall bright orange years ago. That's my boy!) and when we moved to this house a couple years ago, Ally had us paint one wall of her bedroom bright pink. They are my kids for sure.

To Ally's credit, her tastes are more subdued and mature than mine. She paired her pink wall with black and white, a color scheme she has carried with her to her new apartment. With her room empty, I decided it needed a new quilt to welcome her home on visits and other visitors in her absence.

Pardon the bad lighting, but here it is! She isn't terribly fond of the change, but her black bedding is tucked into the closet for her to use when she's here.

This is my latest bee quilt from my Sew Bee It group with the McKinney Modern Quilt Guild. I gave each of the girls fat quarters of three of the four colors (pink, orange, yellow and green) and a fat quarter of white and asked them to make me two different blocks from Sew Mama Sew's 2015 Modern block of the month. The blocks I received back were fantastic! Of course, since I have sixteen blocks, some are duplicates. Turns out none of the blocks are in triplicate which is perfect. And the blocks that are from the same pattern look so different from each other because of color placement. Can you even find the four duplicate blocks?

I used a simple setting, a row featuring each of the four colors with wide white sashing in between. My friend Diann added her magic on the longarm...

I love the modern triangles with the swirls to add some movement to an otherwise very angular quilt.

You might be able to see that she used a variegated thread, with citrusy orange, yellow & lime green which was the perfect choice. I made a scrappy binding, using all of the solids found in the quilt.

Also, this is finish #2 for me in the fourth quarter of the 2016 Finish Along. How is your quarter shaping up?