Quilt Finish – Saturate Me

This is another catchup post for a quilt that never fully got its quilt finish blog post. Considering I spent years making all these blocks, this Saturate Me diva is demanding her official day in the spotlight! All right, Mr. Demille, I’m ready for my close up.

I spent a lot of time in 2017 working on a quilt-along called The Honey Pot Bee. It was a different take on a traditional quilting bee. As most of you know, you would normally make quilt blocks and send them to others in some type of swap format. Well, being sticky like honey, participating members made monthly blocks but kept them for their own quilts. This allowed each quilter to ensure the fabrics and quality of construction was to their own liking. Also, if you didn’t make a block that month, you had no one to blame but yourself! There was zero pressure, and just a fun way to gain a sense of community with like-minded quilters.

Over the course of the year, monthly royalty (pre-selected by myself) shared quilt block patterns with the group that they had either designed or selected from another designer for all of us to make. As the host, I made each one, but threw in some of my older orphan quilt blocks as well. Serendipitously, one of those orphan blocks is a Molli Sparkles Mood Ring block, which the pattern was also used for my recent Neon Daze quilt finish. As most of you know, I’m entranced by colour, and this quilt was an open love letter to its brilliance.

You can read about the finished quilt top here or you can jump straight to The Honey Pot Bee posts and links to tutorials:

The Honey Pot Bee Posts & Tutorials

I finished assembling all of my blocks into a quilt top (that was somehow squared up remarkably without much effort!) in July 2018. While the paper-pieced “2017” block resinates pretty loudly in the bottom right corner, I didn’t completely finish the last stitch of the binding until July 2019. I got distracted, okay? Also, that binding fabric is from Anna-Maria Horner’s Honor Roll collection. Called, Balancing Act, it’s all shades of perfect!

For the back I used Kokka Echino Huedrawer, Cotton Sateen Metallic, Triangle Birds Grey that I picked up on a trip to Japan. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, cotton sateen for quilt backs is so delightfully delicious. It cools you down while you’re warming up! The quilting is a simple grid by Leanne at Mount Vincent Quilts. This was my request as I didn’t want the quilting to overpower or conflict with the intensity of the quilt top. Since Leanne’s Bernina longarm doesn’t have a channel lock, I applaud her perseverance! (Even though I’m sure she wanted to stab me with a fork!)

Saturate Me was shown in the Modern Quilt Show Australia 2019 with the description card reading, “My design intent was always about saturated colours, maximalism, pattern plan, and the sense of discovery that can happen when the viewer is invited into that world.” Oh and honey, look at those shoes! I’m not saying I intentionally bought them to coordinate with this quilt, but I’m not saying I didn’t either! ::wink wink::

Title: Saturate Me
Size: 57″ x 68″ 
Pattern: In part by blocks created for The Honey Pot Bee, and then improvisational assemblage.
Fabric: Molli Sparkles curated bundle
Piecing: Machine stitched on Juki TL-98P with Aurifil 50wt, 2024 White
Quilting: Long arm quilting, by Mount Vincent Quilts
Binding: Hand-stitched with Aurifil 50wt, 2024 White
Backing: Kokka Echino Huedrawer, Cotton Sateen Metallic, Triangle Birds Grey
Timing: January 2017 – July 2019
Favourite Part: The sense of community it created.