FF: Stash Bee 2016 Quilt, Woo!

I have another finish in the books, and none too soon. This quilt has been sitting around, basted, taunting me. Demanding attention. And I would have loved to give in to its demands, but I couldn't as I had NO IDEA how to quilt this bad boy. PS-Thanks to EVERYONE on IG who chimed in with ideas. It's part of what makes IG grand, and I am so thankful for a helpful, constructive community. (But we already know that quilters are the best sort of people.)

Brief introduction: this is a quilt using blocks from Stash Bee Hive 5. I'm not gonna lie, this is an impressive set of individuals. (I am totally not biased, even if I am the hive mama.) The block is called the Five Crosses, and if you're interested in making it, I wrote up a Five Crosses block tutorial because I couldn't find one anywhere!

Last week, I pulled my quilt sandwich down and spread it out in my kitchen. (It seemed like the perfect time--I had actually mopped my floors!) I marked it up with my hera marker. I considered FMQ. I added magenta painter's tape. I went through five or six ideas before rejecting them all. And what I kept coming back to was straight lines, two inches apart.

But it seemed boring. Not necessarily that it would look boring, but really boring to quilt up. So I opted to shake things up and did the straight lines in quarters, rotating the lines every time I moved on to a new quarter. (I used a combination of my hera marker and the guide on my walking foot.) I'm not sure you can see very well from the above photo of the quilt's center, but half of the lines are horizontal, and the other half are vertical.

After I quilted it, the quilt looked kinda crummy. Not gonna lie. It rippled a bit, which was distressing to say the least. And the back...well, you can kinda see what happened in the pic below.

The backing fabric misbehaved in the extreme. Although, my husband mentioned that he actually thinks the waviness of the back is super cool--I dunno, but whatevs. I will say that once I washed the quilt, it decided to get with the program, and now it lays flat, thank goodness. The washing machine seems to have kicked the ripple out of its ornery system. The back is what it is, but I can live with it.

The blocks I received were a mishmash of serious fun, and I sashed it up using a green Grunge fabric. The outer border is also Grunge--not sure which blue. And I bound it up using leftovers of the green Grunge and a bit of green and white stripe I had leftover from my recent Night Sky finish. I thought this would be a good option for machine binding, plus I used my zigzag stitch to finish it, which is always super fun.

I've been trying to take my quilts out and about and photograph them in fun places, but with the heat index hitting 105 and 109 degrees F, well, I haven't been much interested in leaving my house, especially not third-trimester preggo with three littles in tow. So I thought I would take some photos of this one around my house, leaving things much as they are. It is not uncommon to find trucks and duplos and random shoes strewn about the place. It's also not uncommon to find toddler feet on quilts as my two-year-old likes to dance all over them the moment they are laid on the ground.

I am super thankful to Hive 5 for helping me make such a fun quilt for my friend. I hope to mail it this week. She doesn't know it's coming! So it will be a total surprise, which will be fun. And I'm thankful to everyone that pitched in with suggestions and encouragement as I saw this one to the finish--including, but not limited to, my fabulous quilting sensei, K. Because everyone should have a quilting sensei. But you can't have mine. Because she's mine, and poor thing already has to deal with ME!

This is finish #6 from my Q3 FAL list. My pace has slowed a bit, but I'm still making progress, which is practically a miracle. Now, I really need to get tackling some of those other projects--like some sewing for my daughter who will be here lickety-split!