Bloggers Quilt Festival Quilt

Hi and welcome to everyone visiting from the Blogger's Quilt Festival! I hope you enjoy looking around my little blog and come back and visit again soon. My finished quilts are in the tab at the top of the page if you want to see some more of my projects!

This autumn, I don't have a new quilt reveal to show you so I thought I would share one of my favourite quilts from the last few months with you.

This is my Across the Sea quilt - from the quiltalong I hosted with my good friend Jennifer. This was the first quiltalong I've hosted and I really enjoyed it and was so thrilled to see everyone's interpretation of our pattern.What makes this quilt even more special is that it is made for my new niece and is ready to be delivered next weekend at her Christening.

Jennifer designed the front of this quilt - the cross blocks are simple and striking and the scrappy border really ties it together, I love it!

I designed a "floating crosses" back pattern which lines up with the front crosses to make quilting it even easier.

My quilt was made mostly with some FQs from "Just Wing It" by Momo for Moda, with some additional fabrics added in to vary the colour palette. I love how colourful it is, and that is is nice and girlie without being too pink!

I free motion quilted it myself with a meandering stipple.

And its bound in a lovely small scale red and pink apple print. Perfect!

I do love this quilt and hope you do too. If you're interested in making it, the instructions are all available in the Quiltalong page tab at the top of my blog and let me know if you have any questions! Its suitable for all ranges of quilters, even total beginners and there is lots more info in our Flickr group too.

Quilt Stats:

Name: Across the Sea quilt
Made For: My niece R
Fabric: Just Wing It by Momo for Moda + some additional fabrics
Batting: Warm and White
Size: 46" x 58"
Quilting: Meandering stipple by me
Pattern: Mine and Jennifers quiltalong pattern.

Thanks for visiting and hope I see you again soon!

Walk In the Woods (It's a Hoot) Quilt Finish!

Here it is, my biggest quilt to date! If you're a regular reader, you'll already be familiar with the story of this quilt so feel free to skip the next little bit and enjoy the photos! If you're visiting my blog for the first time from the Blogger's Quilt Festival (or elsewhere!), welcome and I hope you pop back to visit often! Here's a little info about it.

This quilt is made for my goddaugher's First Communion. F is the eldest daughter of my oldest, childhood friend and I wanted to make something special for her to mark the occasion. I wanted something fresh and pretty, but not too pink and girlie, as I wanted it to be something that she would be happy to bring with her and use as she grew up. I spent some time browsing through fabric before deciding to use Moda's It's A Hoot - which is whimsical, colourful, full of lovely prints and quite girlie in an understated kind of way.

I drew up my own pattern for this quilt and it is made using two simple block types. One is a simple four-patch with a border, the other is a larger charm framed with a double border. The prints were so lovely they were crying out for fussy cutting techniques wherever possible and I think I managed to make the best use of the layer cake for the various squares.

I used white sashing to make the squares pop, and an additional skinny sashing block made from the scraps left over from cutting the frame borders around the outside edge. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

This is my 4th quilt ever and (I think!) my favourite so far! It's the first time I've made a quilt entirely from one line/range of fabric. Normally I mix and match elements I like from different lines, and I found it a little strange (and maybe a teeny bit limiting!!) to work totally within one line. It makes for a lovely quilt although I did miss the challenge (and those moments of utter satisfaction when something just works) of putting together my own coordinates more than I thought I would.

I used free motion quilting for the first time on a quilt for this one. Its not perfect by any means, but I'm very happy overall with it, even if it was a little challenging! I love the crinkly texture from the quilting :-) Because it was a special quilt I used backing from the same line - the Owls in raspberry

I went with the Marshmallow dots for the binding. I think I'm in love with the binding actually! The dots are much more striking than I thought they would be. And happily, I have a half yard left so I'll be saving that for binding for another quilt.

In summary -

Name: Walk in the Woods quilt
Fabric: Moda - It's a Hoot by Momo layer cake + yardage for sashing & backing/binding,
Batting: Warm & White
Quilting: First time free motion meandering
Measures: 69" x 56 "
Pattern: My own!

I'm linking this quilt up to the Blogger's Quilt Festival over at Amy's Creative Side. As this was a huge project for me, you might also see it linked up on a pile of other great blogs ;-) including {Sew} Modern Monday, Fabric Tuesday, Sew Cute Tuesday and more- check out my sidebar for these links! If you'd like to see other quilts I've made, check out the tab link at the top of the page "Quilt Finishes 2011".