Modern Traditional Challenge

I stumbled across this challenge that was posted at the beginning of this month.  When I saw the theme, I had a couple of ideas about what I wanted to do.  I went to my LQS in search of the right fabrics and fell in love with Dear Stella's Spring Street.  I've been using Sketch for quite a while now as accents in my bee blocks and round robins.  I really like the feel of solid movement that the screen-like tone-on-tone lines create.  A lot of the time they have the same overall feel as quilters linen.

From Spring Street, I chose Blossoms and Delft Calico for the front.  Wedding ring is the main fabric on the backing with the Blossoms in the center and the Multi-Strips makes the binding.  From the Sketch line, I used Daffodil and Grass on the front and Sapphire on the back.

I recently learned to hand piece and I knew I wanted to work that traditional practice into the overall piece.  I chose the Honey Bee block that I associate with 1930's quilts.  I like the watercolor look of Blossoms complemented by the Calico to simulate a garden feel.  The Daffodil and Grass were the perfect backdrop.

The entire center Honey Bee block (12" square) is hand pieced including the 12 bees that are needle-turned applique.  The Border is partially hand pieced and partially machine pieced--to blend the traditional and modern.  The piano keys and the tulip blocks in the corners are hand pieced.  The HST's for the tulips were chain pieced and the square-in-square blocks were paper pieced.  The border blocks were machine pieced to each other and to the center Honey Bee block.

I chose to go with a totally modern feel for the quilting.  I used my home machine to create the free-motion patterns.

It has been officially submitted and I can't wait to see what everyone else does too.  All the progress pics on Instagram are so very different from my style.