Pop Crazy!

I love colour; it makes me happy.  My living room, office and tv room are painted different shades of green and chartreuse, my bathrooms are both blue, my bedroom is pale turquoise, my son's room is cornflower and my daughter's is pepto-bismol pink.  I selected the fabrics, furnishing and accents in all of these rooms to further activate the walls, making the colours seem even more intense.  I can't get enough colour.

Last Christmas, I made a quilt for my son's twin bed.  It is mainly blue rectangles punctuated by solid white.  I also made sure to include a wild card - a lone green patch - and some floral patterns and pink, just cuz.  I made a scrappy binding and backed the quilt with a warm brown solid and some more green.

My daughter was upset when she realized that there wasn't a quilt for her.  I explained that I had started working on her quilt but it would take me more time to assemble.  Furthermore, ladies across Canada were sewing just for her!

In July of 2011, I joined a Flickr group called Unscripted.  It is a quilting bee and the first one that I've ever participated in.  The group is comprised of twelve quilters across Canada who wanted to try out some improvisational quilting.  Each of us was assigned a month.  During my month, I had to select a block that I wanted the other members to sew and select and cut fabric for it.  The fabric would be mailed out with instructions and the other members of the bee would sew a block and then mail back the finished piece.

After sewing the block below for August, I knew that I wanted some hot colours in Gwen's quilt.  The "red" in the block is actually more on the orange side than it appears.

I told the bee members that I was inspired by the quilts of Denyse Schmidt and Malka Dubrawsky, two designers with a very modern aesthetic.  I cut and mailed out stacks of pink, orange and purple fabric to the ladies in my quilting bee.  I also added in some white to break up all that saturated colour.  I asked them to be creative and to sew the fabric together in any size or shape. I also asked them to add in some complementary fabric from their stash.  Yes, all good quilters have a stash.

The ladies did not disappoint.  As the blocks started to trickle in, I was ecstatic!  You can see below that I received many different styles of blocks - all unique.

My plan was to arrange the finished blocks to my liking and break them up with light grey and smaller blocks that I had sewn.  I had purchased a huge, high quality cotton flat sheet at the Sears Outlet last year for $12.  It was very soft (high thread count) and I knew it would complement the pink, orange and purple.

Here's a picture of the quilt, before I began to attach the binding.

As I write this, I am taking a break from hand-sewing the binding to the back of the quilt.  I have one side left and I am hoping to get it finished today.

3 hours later, I've finished sewing on the binding.  Here it is right before I pop it in the washer.

And here is the final product, fresh from the dryer!  I love it!

Here is some information about my quilt:

Pop Crazy was quilted by Christine Montgomery at Quitty Prickly .  Unscripted (my Bee Girls) contributed with some of the pieces, which I later cut up and resewed or worked into larger sections.  
Dimensions are:  78 x 72.  Machine pieced, handsewn binding.