first quilt finish of 2014

First of all- fail on the fabric fast. Oh well. I gave it a valiant effort. :)

Last year I signed up for a 12 month bee through Flickr called Simply Solids. This bee really pushed me outside of my comfort zone and I learned a lot from it! I feel like my biggest accomplishment of the bee was learning (and liking!) how to paper piece. Here are some of my favorite blocks that I completed for others in the bee last year:

For my blocks, I sent everyone this inspiration photo:

 

This above photo is from Eom Jae Young's work of the LA Modern Quilt Guild. (Please [!!!] let me know if you would prefer for me not to have it here and I will remove it!) I fell in love with these blocks when I saw the picture and knew that this was the inspiration I wanted to give the other ladies in my bee for my block! I love the idea of an improv. bee for so many reasons... it's so exciting to see what you get back.

So, I sent a copy of the above picture to the ladies in my bee to use as inspiration along with a bunch of fabrics in pinks, purples and whites. My color inspiration for the fabric I sent came from this picture from Saved by the Southern Belle:

And the blocks I got back! HOLY COW, they were great!!! All so different but still with a common anchor. LOVE.

I started putting the blocks together and I got this:

And I wasn't thrilled. Which was kinda crazy because I LOVED all of the blocks separately. So I decided to add a border. And I got this:

And I was then QUITE the opposite of thrilled. What is going on here?! I thought about it for a while, gnashed my teeth, pleaded for suggestions on Instagram and then pulled out my seam ripper and went to town. The whole time I was ripping everything apart I was so aggravated... but once I put it all back together again I was SO HAPPY that I did. Why? Because I looooooooove  my new quilt!!!

 

not really sure why the picture looks pixelated... don't mind that!

Doesn't it look so different?! I am in L-O-V-E- LOVE with this quilt!!! It's pretty big- it covers the top of my queen bed nicely- and is absolutely perfect for cuddling. Or- let's be honest- falling asleep on the couch at 9:00 on a Friday night after a hard week at work. #keepinitreal

Oh- and the quilting? It is gorgeous!!! Jill totally knocked it out of the park this time on the quilting.

Seriously- can you even handle it?

And just because I'm not sure if I've shared enough pictures of this quilt yet, here are some I waterlogued (it's totally a verb). :)

Looooooooooooove.

There you have it, friends! My first quilt finish of 2014... that I only sewed one block for and the binding. Hey- what can you do? :) I'm heading to a little weekend sew-in tomorrow with some friends and hope to get two quilt tops done there. Fingers crossed! :)