Blogger's Quilt Festival - Touch of Grey

Hello All,

 

 Welcome to my first entry for the Blogger's Quilt Festival hosted by Amy's Creative Side every Spring and Fall.

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For those of you who are new to my blog, welcome! If you already read my blog, you probably saw this quilt just a few days ago in my original post. Over the weekend I decided to take some pictures of the hand quilting, and then enter in BQF in the hand quilted category.

I am pretty new to sewing and quilting, so I do most of my quilting by hand. I find it relaxing, and I love to pass the time quilting a little bit every evening.

This was entirely hand quilted with DMC perle size 8 and size 5. This was my first time quilting with size 5, it was a challenge to pull that much thread through the layers, and the needle I had to use was massive. I like how well it shows up and I love the colors.

I used fairly big stitches, and quilted around the borders of each rectangle.

I had some large areas of negative space in the corners, so I decided to quilt shadow rectangles in those areas.
 

Still very crinkly from the wash.

 

This one took about 4 weeks to quilt. I called this one Touch of Grey, I felt like the different greys in the background and in the borders helped balance out the bright colors. I named my last quilt (Ripple) after a Grateful Dead song, so I thought I'd stick with that theme for now :)

Hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful weekend, now go check out the other quilts in BQF!

Thanks for stopping by,

Touch of Grey - A Finished Quilt

Happy Friday!

I finally finished the binding on my second quilt made from my Amy Butler Spots jelly roll.

It was meant to be finished a month ago, for my middle sister's 16th birthday. I will have to get it in the mail this week. I'm just happy I finished it before Christmas!

I called this one Touch of Grey. It's completely hand quilted, though you can't see the quilting in the photos very well. I need to take more close-ups of it before mailing it off...The hand quilting I did was very similar to the quilting in this quilt's "sister," Maintain Block Integrity.

My goal with these two was to make similar, but not identical quilts for my younger sisters. I used the same fabrics to make the center squares back in May, but added on over the summer, and finished both of them in completely different ways. I didn't really have a plan for this one, so I'm glad it came together as well as it did.  

I tried to use some of the same solids in both of them, and gave them both the same scrappy solid binding. I had a hard time deciding which quilt to make for which sister--I hope I got it right! :)

Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!

Linking with Crazy Mom Quilts

Carpenter's Wheel - Finished Center

Happy Sunday!

Over the last week, I received a few extra yards of Essex Yarn Dyed linen, and was able to finish the center of my Carpenter's Wheel quilt top:

Annoyingly, when I started trying to piece all of these diamonds together, I realized that my 7" diamond template, wasn't 7" on both sides. The template I made was 7" across one way, and only 6.5" across the other side. By the time I realized it--after the center and the corners were pieced, I figured it was too late. I was not about to go back and rip all of those seams out, and trim down my blocks.

I pushed through, and I made them fit together. Have you ever done that before? I'm happy with it. You can't really tell that the diamonds are off from the photo, and I was still able to save all of my points because the squares of background fabric were too big for the slightly smaller on one side diamonds.

Now it's around 80" x 80", I'm waiting for fabric to arrive to finish the border--I'm adding a thin border of kona emerald, and another border of the Essex linen. I haven't decided what to do for the back yet. I'm not sure if I want to get 6 yards of fabric for backing, get a big sheet, or try to use scraps and make a very large pieced backing. How do you back your extra large quilts?

This week I'm linking with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced and NTT Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation

Supernova Swap - Final Month

October is a very exciting month around here, quilting-wise. Not only is it my turn to be Queen Bee in the NQB Bee I'm in, it's also the final month of The Supernova Swap.

Because we're so close to the end, I got a bit excited and made my final block over the weekend. I'll have 10 total, but it's nice to have most of them done so I can play with different layouts.

Once I get my final block in the mail, I'll decide on my final layout. I'm also trying to decide what to do with the extra block....mini quilt? pillow? I don't know, but it's nice to see everything coming together!

Happy Wednesday!

Linking with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced and NTT Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation