Saturday, May 16, 2015

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Colorado Beauty

Hello!

It's that time of year again for the Blogger's Quilt Festival from Amy's Creative Side. If you are new to my blog, welcome!

My favorite quilt from the last 6 months is my Colorado Beauty Quilt. This one was so much fun to make, and it's my entry in the scrappy category.


This quilt is very close to my heart because it reminds me of my home state, and one of my best friends, who is now the proud owner of this quilt. I was home for a visit a couple of weeks ago, and it was so nice to hear how much they loved the quilt I made them!

This quilt started with a few piles of made fabric/scrappy blocks sorted by color. I turned these into HSTs, and played with the design for a while, so many choices! You can read more about my progress in this post.


In the end, I chose this layout for a few reasons. I wanted the quilt to look like a map of Colorado when held horizontally--red rocks, purple mountains, and the green and amber plains (from west to east). When you hold it vertically, with the red at the top, I think it looks more like a sunset over the mountains.


The quilt's center is Denver (I marked it using a map), and created a Colorado Beauty block around it.


I love hand quilting, so I did add a bit around the center. I quilted the rest in straight lines.

And here's a picture of the back:


I loved the entire process of making this quilt, and was so surprised at how well my scraps came together. I wish it motivated me to make more scrap quilts, and use up the rest of my scrap bin!

You can see the rest of the entries for the Spring 2015 Blogger's Quilt Festival on Amy's website, it is fun to see everyone else's best work from the last 6 months. She has quite a few categories open, so there's something for everyone!


9 comments:

  1. This is a fabulous quilt, Kate, and I love the thought that you put into the planning of the colors and layout of the quilt. How awesome to get to go home and hear how much your friend loves the quilt, too!

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  2. I love how vibrant this quilt is! It's so bright and colorful!! Fantastic!

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  3. Wow what a great use of scraps! Love the layout and how you mixed the rainbow colors with the pale grey.

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  4. More hand quilting!! This is another lovely quilt, and I'm sure your friend will treasure it.

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  5. I still love this quilt so much! The way you used an actual map to locate the focal point is beyond genius!

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  6. what a gorgeous quilt! I love the way the saturated, bright colours fade out towards the bottom and I love your use of "made" fabric for the HSTs

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  7. I like the way you "composed" the fabric to make the HSTs. And the back!

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  8. Love this - it's really neat and the colors are fabulous.

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  9. Love the quilt, and even more, the story :-) Thanks for sharing

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