I've decided to participate in the Blogger's Quilt Festival this year!
Follow that link and go see all the other participants great quilts!According to the guidelines I can share any quilt as long as I write a new blog post about it. Okey doke. I thought of sharing other quilts that I have made and posted about previously, but since I have finished this quilt and not written a blog post for it, this is the one.
It's been so long since I even photographed this I'm having trouble even remembering what to say about this quilt. Let's start with I LOVE THIS QUILT! I love every fabric in it. I love the quilting. I love the thread I used for the quilting. I love the binding. My three favorite colors combined with the batiks to make a quilt that just makes me warm and happy to look at it. I wish I could keep it.
This is the second time I have made a Picture This quilt from Atkinson Designs' book Happy Hour. It is a simple pattern with big blocks that work up quickly and when combined with fat quarters in fabrics you love turn out a really nice looking quilt.
Made for my new nephew, Cam, the first of the 'next' generation in our family, it took me until his first birthday to actually finish it. The top was finished for months, but I became distracted by other things and I finally got back to it, pieced the back and quilted it in time for, well. In time for him to not be an adult yet. It is on the large size for a baby quilt, so he'll be able to use it as a lap quilt for a while. (If I can part with it. I will. I really will!)
This nine block quilt required eighteen fat quarters and after cutting there are enough significant scraps to get another quilt top from, the instructions to do so are in the book. Both times I've made the quilt I have used that 'top' as the back of the quilt.
This is the first quilt I have ever quilted if you don't count a couple of table runners and a small holiday wall quilt. One was free-motion practiced quilted and the rest were either stitch in the ditch or straight line. I always said that putting the fabrics together and piecing were my favorite parts of quilting and I was happy to pay a long arm quilter to finish my quilts. This was a fun challenge for me. The straight line quilting runs parallel to the contrast fabric in each block which made for a lot of turning and each block was quilted individually. There are three quilting 'patterns', one has narrow spacing, one wider, and one is a combination of the two. I went for the illusion of straight lines and didn't attempt exactness in the spacing. I was often using my walking foot as a guide and it turns out that the needle on the machine I used isn't centered so well to my walking foot. Once I realized that I had a decision to make and I decided that from a distance........
From a speeding train..... ;)
I can tell you one thing, I used to say that I was only straight line quilting it, as if that was some kind of excuse for quilting or a cop-out. I'll never say it again. I also used to think I would never use those variegated quilting threads because for some reason, in my mind, they looked tacky. Where do I get these ideas!? I'm a convert! I love straight line quilting and I love those threads! I used three different colors when quilting the quilt, but the same one in the bobbin.
Twenty blocks make up the lap sized quilt in the pattern book and I downsized it to twelve for the baby/toddler size I was going for. It made it harder to come up with a pleasing layout and looking at these photos I can see one thing I might have done differently. Oh well! Stuck with it now.
Well, I'm not using it, but I still haven't managed to part with it. I will. I have been collecting the fabrics to make another or a similar lap sized quilt for me......
2012. Nine. This was a good excuse for me to finally blog this quilt. I've got a lot of other things to blog as well, hopefully that will be happening. Remember my last post? I'm on a sewing machine cover roll and that is always fun to watch.....
