Getting ready to quilt the hexis

I finished piecing the quilt top last week and have been trying to figure out how I will quilt it. (The photo looks a bit odd because I have to 'glue' two photos together into one.)

Because this quilt was made from bee blocks made by the Monday Modern quilters, I wanted to do 'modern' quilting. But, I can't come up with anything modern except for painful stitch in the ditch or carefully-marked diagonal cross-hatching. Neither of these appeal.

So, after staring at my quilt hanging on the wall for the past week, I can't help seeing flowers in a field of grass. And when I think hexagons, I think bees.

So, some doodling has resulted in this plan.

Not a great rendition - it will be easier to do on my Swiftquilter than using my right-handed mouse (especially because I am left handed). The bee will take some practice, but I only plan on including a few.

This quilt is the largest of the ones I've done on my Swiftquilter and is just slightly (2 inches) too big to fit on the un-extended frame. Hubby helped add the extension on and I now have a 9-foot contraption sitting in my living room. It seems like overkill for the extra couple of inches, but from experience it's better to have a lot of room on the edges as a staging area for the machine. The last quilt I did maxed out the space and I had to reach under the quilt to change my bobbins.

Speaking of bobbins, how many will it take to quilt this? It's a problem to stop and refill them and I go through a lot. I am guessing 10-12. But, it's impractical to fill up so many (do I even have enough), so I do them in batches of 4.

Hubby and daughter are away skiing next week, so this will be my opportunity to stay up late and get this done. It needs to be finished by 5 August, so I better get moving!