Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2013

Have you heard about the Blogger's Quilt Festival that Amy hosts over at Amy's Creative Side? I love looking through all the entries each spring and fall, and I almost never remember to enter any of my quilts in time. For this festival though, I knew exactly which quilt I wanted to enter: my Gradated Mod Mosaic quilt.



You regular visitors here at Pitter Putter Stitch know how much blood, sweat, and tears went into this quilt. It started back in March of 2012. I had received a ton of color wheel charms and didn't have a clue as to what I should do with them. My month in the Sew Beautiful Bee was in April and inspiration struck as I looked through the colorful charms.

I started planning a ROYGBIV quilt. My goal was to create a quilt that would lead your eye through the color wheel in a gradated manner. I used Paint (yeah, I'm fancy that way) to draw a mock up of my idea to share with the girls in the Sew Beautiful Bee.



I sent out my fabrics,



made several blocks of my own, and then started piecing the quilt together. The top came together exactly as I envisioned.



Fast forward to the end of 2012 and I still hadn't finished the quilt. I wanted it to turn out amazing so I sent it off for quilting in January 2013. Unfortunately, the back was attached to the top sideways. I nearly started crying when I noticed that it wasn't on right. So I began the arduous task of unpicking all the quilting that had been done. My sweet husband even spent a night or two helping me.

Once all the quilting was unpicked and I was recovered from all the mojo-draining that happened, I re-basted the quilt and set out to quilt it myself. I quilted organic straight lines about 1/4-1/2 inch apart horizontally across the quilt. The quilting gave the quilt such amazing texture, which is exactly what I was hoping for!



For the backing, I used large squares of rainbow colors as a simplified/color-blocked version of the front. I also included the Sew Beautiful Bee label each of us received.



Thanks to all the ladies in my bee! I couldn't be happier with how this quilt turned out.

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Goldfish Quilt

For this year's Fall Blogger's Quilt Festival, I wanted to share my newly-finished Goldfish Quilt.

Front:


Back:


While this quilt's design is nothing to shout about, what makes this quilt special is that it came together with other people's help.

My friend, Leigh, learned of my love for Heather Ross' Goldfish in Bags fabric at the end of last year. Since I came onto the quilting scene well after the fabric was out of print, I didn't have any. Leigh was amazing and swapped some of her other Heather Ross fabric to get me a fat quarter of these little fishies! Totally blew me away!



I wanted to make the most of the fabric so I fussy cut the fish and framed them in white and blue and orange fabric.



For the border, I used a stripe fabric from the same Lightning Bugs and Other Mysteries line that I won in a giveaway from Rae earlier in the year.

It's nice to have this quilt finally done.

Blogger's Quilt Festival

I was looking back over the quilts I've made this year and realized that there's only one that I really really love, but I entered it in the quilt festival last time. So, inside of looking for a quilt I really loved, I instead tried to find a quilt I was proud of having made, and it's this charity quilt.


My brother-in-law asked me a few months ago if I'd be willing to make and donate a quilt for a silent auction his neighborhood was putting together to raise money for a boy with cerebral palsy. Since I only started quilting in January, I haven't had many opportunities for charity projects and thought this would be a great way to give back. After all, my family has been the recipient of some wonderfully charitable people over the years.

I set out to find a design that would work well with the jellyroll I planned to use. I ended up finding three designs that I liked and worked to fuse them together.


I wanted the back to be pieced so there would be more versatility to the quilt, thinking maybe someone would want to bid on it more if they could almost get two quilts out of one. So I sketched out the back...


and was able to break out of my "single fabric collection shell" a little bit by adding some fabrics from my stash that coordinated nicely - a good exercise for me.


I liked how some of the cuts came together to make a design I hadn't anticipated.


And I worked hard to improve my skills, carefully quilting and binding the quilt, forcing myself to take more care since I wanted it to be of good enough quality that someone would want to bid on it.

All in all, I'm really proud of this quilt. Not because I love the design, but mostly because I tried harder to do a better job to make a product that someone would want to own.

Finally Finished: Life Is What You Make It

Sunday was a great day! I got so much sewing done. At my family quilt bee on Saturday (more on that when I get the pictures from my sister - I forgot my camera!), I didn't do a ton of sewing on my own projects as I was busy helping others or letting others use my machine. So on Sunday I wanted to make up some of that time. I finally finished my Life Is What You Make It quilt. And just in time for Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival, and I'll have something to contribute to Amylouwho's sew & tell this week too!








This quilt measures about 67 by 84 inches. I opted to use a wavy stitch in parallel lines about an inch and a half apart for the quilting. I really like how it turned out. I'm learning though that the "quilting" part of quilting is not my favorite because of how time-consuming and awkward it can be. I love the look of it and feel that the scrunchy look is what makes a quilt a quilt, so I guess I just need to keep practicing and hope that I improve my technique over time.


And here's the back.


I did the binding a little bit differently this time. I made it 2 1/4 inches wide instead of 2 1/2. I definitely liked the smaller binding, but it was a beast when I got to the corners. Two of them I had to stitch by hand because the bulk wouldn't fit under the foot. I also found it helpful to make the binding ahead of time - not at the beginning of the process, but after the quilting was done. In the past I've pieced the binding, pressed it, and added it to the quilt all in one night. But this time I made the binding the day before and then wound it up. Then, the next day, all I had to do was pull out the roll and get to work binding the quilt. I think I'll do it this way from now on.


I really love how this quilt turned out. I was starting to get sick of looking at this fabric for so long and on a few separate projects. But, now that this quilt is finished and put to use (first time snuggle on the couch with the mister last night while we watched the LOST series finale), I love it as much as I did when I first saw it. Thanks Missouri Quilt Co. for the quilt idea.