Bloggers Quilt Festival Fall 2011, My Entry.

I decided it would be fun to enter a quilt into the Blogger's Quilt Festival which is generously hosted by Amy of Amy's Creative Side.

I've shown the progress of this quilt before but apart from sewing in a few threads it's now finished. The quilt was started way back in 2008 when I decided to make a quilt in the style of Kaffe Fassett, I borrowed a couple of his books from the library for inspiration and chose this one. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of the book, the quilt was called the Postcard Quilt and if my memory serves me correctly it was inspired by a quilt in London's Victoria and Albert museum. It was made by Liza Prior Lucy and is a medallion quilt.

Image taken from the book, sorry about poor quality.

 This quilt was made using templates which I didn't fancy so I adapted the design to use rotary cut fabric. My quilt isn't an exact copy of the one in the book, I just used Kaffe's as inspiration.

The quilt required lots of different fabrics, I bought a few but many were scraps and the purple inner border fabric was retreived from a friends rubbish bin!

This was the first time I had attempted such a large quilt and it spent long periods of time lonely and forgotten in a cupboard until the urge would strike to work on it again.

 I'm proud to say that I quilted it on my domestic sewing machine. When I started the quilting it felt like a very daunting prospect, trying to wrestle such a large, heavy quilt through the machine was quite a struggle at times. I soon realised it was best to concentrate on a small area at a time and try not to look at the rest of what needed to be done . 

After a while of quilt photography, which wasn't easy on a dull breezy day, some quilt photography hysteria set in!

Thanks to husband and ten year old son for help with taking the photos.

Thanks also go to Amy for hosting the quilt festival, I was planning on visiting and commenting on the blogs of all  the other entrents but as the number of entries now stands at 345   I don't think I'll quite manage it, but I'll visit as many as I can.

Maria.

Duo and Bloggers BOM Quilt -A-Long.

A couple of finished quilt along blocks to show today.
First up is the block I've made for the Duo QAL run by Rachel of Contented and Rhonda of Quilter in the Gap. The idea is to make a quilt using a concentric squares pattern on which to practice hand and machine quilting. I decided to make one large block to make a cushion to go with the quilt I'm making for the Lily's Quilts Dead Simple Quilt QAL.
Although I say it myself I think I'm not bad at twirly wirly free machine quilting but would like to have a go at some other free motion designs so this block will be my guinea pig block.

I included the light green solid fabric as a background for hand quilting which I plan to do in variagated orange perle thread.

My second block was made for the Blogger Block of the Month QAL run by Jackie of Canton Village
Quilt Works. Each month block instructions are posted on the blogs of Jackie's merry band of helpers, Sherry at A Quilting Life was the first to go, here is the block I came up with using her instructions. Just noticed some of the points are not too great!

Thanks go to Sherri and Jackie. The next block is up today so I'm off the Jackie's blog to find out where to go for the instructions. By the way there is a flickr group for the QAL here.
Bye for now, Maria.

Cushion number three.

I've shown two of my recent quartet of cushions. Today it's time for number three.
It was inspired by two images I found on flickr, this one and this one. 

Take a look at the fabulous green walls in the background of the two flickr images I've linked too. They set off the cushions much more effectively than my dining room carpet!
Bye for now, Maria x

Picking a Palette

Lynne at Lily's Quilts posed the question "Interested in a dead simple QAL?" Well, yes I thought actually I am. The idea is to make a simple, quick easy quilt where the interesting thing is the palette rather than the pattern which is a squares design. Lynne suggests that you pick a colour palette perhaps from a site such as design seeds, or you make your own palette, and then make the quilt using your chosen palette.
 I've never seen a site like design seeds before, I'd recommend a look, it's fabulous if you love colour.

I've gone about it slightly differently. I found that I didn't have the fabrics for whichever palette I picked on design seeds, and I'm trying to use fabrics I already have not buy new ones! Whilst rummaging through my fabrics I found a half metre of an Amy Butler fabric from the Love range which has a beautiful palette of colours. Why come up with my own palette when Amy's already done the work?!

Luckily I found fabrics in my stash which matched the palette and I'm really pleased with how they look. Left to my own devices I wouldn't have put this selection together.

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I've decided against the pink as although there is a small amount in the pattern I don't like it with the other fabrics.
I've been too impatient to wait for the tutorial on Lily's quilts so I've jumped the gun and started sewing my 5" inch squares together.

Bye for now, Maria.