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I am over the moon with this finish! It's been a long time coming... it began it's life in 2016 when I created the central hexagon and my wonderful Bee A Brit Stingy friends made bee blocks. They each made a square and a triangle block. My brief as 'queen bee' was asking them to use the background fabric I sent, along with a mix of cheery fabrics and create geometric blocks for the squares and triangle blocks made up of triangles.
The starting point for all our bee blocks was a central panel in the shape of a hexagon. The hexagon was formed with six triangles cut from the background fabric. I hand pieced the flowers, which are from the Daisy Do pattern from the book Quilt Lovely by Jen Kingwell. Then machine appliqued them to the background.
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This quilt is called Concrete Garden because of this central panel - the mix of prints with the monotone background reminds me of city living and a garden growing through concrete. Overall the quilt layout and blocks remind me of an allotment too, common in city suburbs.
I recently finished the last two blocks for the quilt and enjoyed laying out the blocks to create the final arrangement. There was a bit of unpicking while sewing the top together, not all the points are perfect but I'm happy with it. I was excited to quilt it. You can see I hand tied the centres of the flowers above, I love hand tying quilts. It's so simple and the texture of those threads just adds such a nice feel. If you've never tried hand tying, let me encourage you to do it! If you'd like to see how I tie my quilts, you can gain access to the video of my class 'Big Stitch Quilting & Tying' in the CraftyMonkies online shop.
For the ties I used Aurifil 12 weight thread #5015 Gold Yellow- a really lovely yellow. Part of the centre and the rest of the quilt was big stitch hand quilted using Aurifil 12 weight #4060 Silver Moon - this one is a variegated grey and it blends so beautifully with the background fabric.
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I did contemplate using a darker colour of thread or using many different colours but ultimately I want the patchwork and the shapes to shine, not the quilting. The quilt still has the scrummy texture of the hand quilting, it's just not that obvious.
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The triangle blocks are all lovely, I quilted each one the same, just quilting 1/4" inside the seams of the triangles that are the background fabric. For the squares I quilted each one differently, you can see the quilting if you look really closely!! The first two blocks I pieced and the rest were pieced by the quilt bees.
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The tricky intersection...
Fabrics:
Fabric scraps, selected from stash by each bee.
Background - The Big One in Pepper, Carkai by Carolyn Friedlander
Quilt Backing - Coquette Collection by Art Gallery Fabrics
Binding - Architextures (or widescreen? in Chestnut?) by Carolyn Friedlander and Houndstooth, Roundup! by Samantha Walker
It was hard to get a good shot of the complete quilt, I was on my own and this is the best I got. Still you can see the dodecagon shape (excuse the wrinkles, it had just finished drying!) and it is the perfect throw quilt. Lovely on a bed but currently living on our sofa (right now... as I type... snuggling it).
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm4ObPoKHDLSkbRrt1SlxMfkIAB1SEUvFHpZAQA0e8p88C8CEQJAuKl2gMdaBusbKBXxUNlmGZAHWod4j6_YBha6rhKlvJ3CWYHStEW5uRBwKMbaIurXSwJGpk8tJX3VSsNyinfLqJ7A/s400/PXL_20210326_112908864.jpg)
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There wasn't enough of either of the two prints I used for the binding to complete the quilt but I was set on brown and so I used both. I couldn't avoid getting the binding seams in the mitred points either (there's a lot of points around the quilt!) but made it work. The binding was machined to the front of the quilt and hand sewn to the back. Just now I realise I have not made a label for this quilt, so that's going on my to sew list.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm4ObPoKHDLSkbRrt1SlxMfkIAB1SEUvFHpZAQA0e8p88C8CEQJAuKl2gMdaBusbKBXxUNlmGZAHWod4j6_YBha6rhKlvJ3CWYHStEW5uRBwKMbaIurXSwJGpk8tJX3VSsNyinfLqJ7A/s400/PXL_20210326_112908864.jpg)
Thank you to my talented Bee friends: Nicky, Sheila, Di, Catherine and Helen for contributing to this quilt, always supporting me and being such a great inspiration. Check out their quilts and the work of #Beeabritstingy here!
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6 comments
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What an amazing quilt. It's just beautiful and what a lot of work.
Oh, Lucy, it’s beautiful! Hooray for finishes! *waves pompoms*
Oh wow, it's a beauty with so much to look at and admire. Such a great finish
Oh my, what an outstanding piece of art!! I absolutely love the design and everything about it, and being a bee quilt it will hold lots of memories of friendship as well. x
Fabulous, worth the wait x
It's really gorgeous Lucy. There's such great balance in the blocks your bee mates sent you - nobody's block is screaming louder than any others. That's a great job!!