Coast to Coast Traveling Bee Quilt 3

It's fun to think that these quilts from the Coast to Coast Traveling Bee were started late last year, and here we are in May. This is the third quilt I've had the pleasure of working on, meaning I'm more than halfway through now. Two more to go!

Summer started off her quilt with the awesome center medallion, then bordered it with the big HSTs and triangles. Her color palette was fun, and her directions fairly open, so I went to work, thinking of what I could contribute to this quilt that would be my own something, but would compliment the work of the other awesome quilters who have already handled this.

I am thoroughly enjoying myself in this bee. It's pushing me, but in a very good way. I'm being challenged to work outside my usual style and contribute to art that has been manipulated and teased about by other different artists. They have their strengths and styles, and I have to determine what about me will be the perfect contribution to each quilt. It's made for some very different ideas (check out Alison and Susan's quilts!) but I like each a whole lot!

Sometimes finding the perfect something takes a lot of thinking time. And in this case, it also took a lot of quilty math.

And this is what I came up with! Summer mentioned HSTs, so I figured pretty early I would use some of those to tie it back to the HSTs in the center, but I was going to wind up with some crazy fractions if I tried to get the HSTs to work with a 43.75" side, so I opted to add the border of squares to the top and bottom to bring it up to 48.5", a measurement that is much more HST friendly.

I took inspiration from Melissa's Royal Quilt from Happy Quilting. I love her play of the two different sizes of HSTs, and that's where I got the idea to use two different sizes in my addition to this quilt.

And if you're wondering what's going on with my quilt, well, check it out! Summer had my quilt this round, so it was fun watching her work on mine as I worked on hers! I would never have imagined it going this direction, and it's so. much. fun. to watch where each person has taken it. I hope you're enjoying following our progress. If you're on instagram, check out #coasttocoasttravelingbee for more pics.