Coast to Coast Traveling Bee {Month #2}

It's time to share what I've added onto the second Coast to Coast Traveling Bee quilt that I have been working on! This month I have been working on Summer's quilt.

As soon as I saw this quilt (even before it was shipped to me!) I had an idea of what I wanted to do for this quilt. I immediately thought of the Sky Rocket blocks that I had made last year for Nela's quilt in the other traveling quilt bee I participated in -- here's the quilt when I added the blocks, the six on the left side.

For this quilt, I decided that I wanted to add a row of blocks on both the top and the bottom of Summer's quilt. My problem was that the width of the quilt was a slightly odd given the size of the blocks (or really any normally sized blocks) because it was 45 inches across.

These are all paper pieced blocks (you can find the pattern here at the Quilter's Cache) that are 9 inches unfinished (8.5 inches finished) with the original directions. Instead of trying to resize the blocks, I cut the outermost edge pieces a quarter inch larger so that I could trim them down once I did some final calculations as well as to have fresh edges when I went to put the blocks together. The points on the blocks don't actually touch one another but I think that looks better than adding tiny strips of spacers in between these blocks.

Here are the paper pieced nine patch sections laid out on the background fabric (all of the fabric is from my stash!):

I made ten blocks -- five for each row. 

The final piece turned out so pretty, it's so tempting to keep all of these quilt tops for myself. :)

This will be on its way to Audrey up in Pennsylvania this afternoon! I've already received my next assignment to work on Karen's quilt! I haven't yet opened up the box because I have so many WIPs currently floating around in my sewing space!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social, Sew Cute Tuesday, and NTT!