Wandering Quilt – Kathy’s kitschy quilt + an update on the honey bee quilt

Just in case you are not familiar with traveling quilts here is the idea: Each member of your group creates a starter block and usually writes a journal with details, theme and style they would like their quilt to end up. You send your starter block to another member in your group (usually there is a list, and you send it to the next lady on the list), they have a month to add on to your starter block and get your quilt going. Then, they send it to the next woman on the list and so on and so on until your quilt arrives back to you. In the meantime, as your quilt is traveling to each member of your group, their quilts are as well, so you will be adding to their quilts.

We have 10 women in our group. That means that 9 ladies besides me will be working on my quilt and I will be working on 9 different quilts. All themed. Here is my wandering quilt.

Our group runs January 2017 – October 2017.

First, an update on my honey bee quilt.

So during the month of April, the pink border was trimmed down and the hexagons were added to the left and above it.

I really liked the pink, so I’m hoping it makes a comeback somewhere in the quilt.

I do really like all the extras added to the inside of the hexagons.  I spy with my pretty eyes an HR momma bee that I love.

For the month of May I am working on Kathy’s quilt.

Kathy’s quilt is about all things ‘kitsch’.  A quick search about kitsch brings up this.  So lots and lots of fun!

Also, if you notice, Kathy’s quilt is made almost exclusively with Cotton + Steel fabrics (psst, that’s whose stash I featured yesterday).

This smart lady sent along all the fabrics for us to use.  Why didn’t I think of that?

So first glance at this quilt and my mouth is hanging awesome.  It’s the coolest, right?  Definitely my favorite so far!

I mean the flamingo (pattern available here)!  The dashing hipster fox (pattern here)!

Just in case you, like me, are just floored by how cool that fox is, Quilting Art Design has a whole mini army of those patterns with different animals here.

Now Kathy has been very specific about what she wants to a point.  My part needs to mirror the fox and surround areas in color, but not including the pineapples and their colors.

So I’m getting ready for saturated city!

No low volume fabrics allowed.  Which of course is something I NEVER do.  But I’m excited so here we go.

Now I’ve already said this quilt is awesome.  I pinned it up in my studio so I could get a feel for what I wanted to do and my daughter (who is home for the summer) saw it and just fell in love.  She also told me not to ruin it.

I was already nervous to add to this quilt, so this little comment didn’t help the matter.

I did get an idea though rather quickly.

Kathy loves this quilt…

This quilt is by Wendy Williams of Material Obsession.  Click the image to be taken to her site.

I was immediately struck by the New York beauties on the corner.  And I’ve been wanting to try a NY beauty for quite awhile.

I can’t add to the corner of Kathy’s quilt, I’ve only got that one straight away to work on, but if I make the NY beauty just a half, then I could make this work.

So I came up with this.

I’m really, really, really excited about this.  Did I say the word ‘really’ too many times?  I want to make sure you know that I’m REALLY excited.

I’m also nervous!  Which is a good thing, right?

My daughter has told me that if I don’t make the llama from the Art Quilting crew I’ve just ruined everything (she’s bossy, you see).  So I’ll make the llama.  Sigh.

I also wanted to make this little lovely.

Apparently, this will be a month of paper piecing for me.

So that is what all my main stuff is going to look like.  The rest I’m going to fill in with bits of fabrics like what you see above the fox and to the right of the fox.

I’ve already got started with the strawberries.

They really didn’t take long.  Maybe 30 minutes.  Sugaridoo offers it as a free pattern if you sign up for her newsletter, which is exactly what I did.

Now here is what I’m thinking for layout.

The llama of course will be with a navy background to mimic the fox and hopefully keep things balanced.

And then the strawberries are showing up in the wrong fabrics, but I hope you can still visualize.

What do you think?

Anything you think I should change?  Can I pull off that highly complicated llama is the real question here?

Helpful Links

How to Paper Piece

Kathy’s Inspiration board

All of my Wandering Quilt posts

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