Amy's Bloggers’ Quilt Festival - Spring 2011

I am very excited to participate in Amy's Bloggers' Quilt Festival this year.  The line of participates and sponsors look fabulous.  This year I am submitting the Spring Wheels quilt I finished earlier this spring.

Spring Wheels by JAQS

I love this quilt for many reasons:

• The way it feels to the touch.  The free motion quilting gives the quilt a very cozy consistent feel all throughout.
• The process of making it.  It was my first time making pinwheels and I LOVE it.  This is definitely a technique I will use again.
• The colors reminds me of spring :)
• The different colored pinwheels.
• The backing - repeats the colored pinwheels and uses my spring favorite fabric.

 The quilt took me a while to finish but I am glad I did :).  Sorry for the repeat, but here are the photos from the original post to detail the quilt.

Reminds me of warm spring days with a slight breeze in the air:



This is the newest addition to the studio. I had a blast making it. I love all the different colors and how they all combined together to create different wheels:



The back repeats the spring wheels:



Don't you just love that pretty and playful Starling fabric? There's some in the front and the back of this quilt - adding a whimsical touch:



Binding is from the Peaceful Planet line from Studio E:



This is quilt #1 of 2 Spring Wheels.  For this one I decided to use a free form quilting style.  It adds a whimsical feel to the quilt and make each of the part of the quilt flow into the other.  I love how it adds a consistent texture to the whole quilt.  I'm working on quilt #2 now - it has more of a structured straight-line quilting style.  I can't wait to see how the two differs once it's quilted :).  I'll share #2 as soon as it's done.  For now I am enjoying looking at #1. 





Quilt Information:
Spring Wheels (#1)
Front: 100% Cotton Prints and Solids.  Showcase fabric: Starling by Alexander Henry
Batting: Warm & Natural 100% cotton
Backing: 100% Cotton Solid (Amy Butler & Kona Solids)
Completed Dimension: ~60" x 66"
Quilting Method: Free Style Meandering
Binding: Machine Sew to Front and Hand Sew to Back (Peaceful Planet by Studio E)

Thanks again Amy for hosting the Bloggers' Quilt Festival Spring 2011.

-Q

Sweet Blocks For Quilt Festival

One of my favorite quilts this year is the Sweet Blocks quilt I made a couple of months ago posted here.


Here's the completed Sweet Blocks sitting sweet after a tumble in the washer and dyer.

A few things about this quilt stood about this quilt -

• It was my first time using triangles in a quilt
• The color scheme - bright colors that are a bit more 'girly' than I'm used to 
• Finding the quilting pattern for this quilt was the most difficult part for me.  I finally settled for straight lines with some definition
• It's my husband's favorite quilt this year :)

Those reasons and the fact that I too love this quilt is why I'm sharing it on Amy's Creative Side's Bloggers Quilt Festival:

Here's some snippets from the original post:

Here's a closeup and the reason why the decision on 'how-to-quilt' took so long:

I've never made a quilt with triangular shapes before. It took a lot of work getting all the triangular corners just right so I didn't want the quilting to distract from it or take away from it. 


I finally decided to do simple straight line quilting from one end of the quilt to the end with both the width and the length: along each seam going along the exterior of each block and 2 side-by-side lines x 2 down for each block area.  The results was a very modern, clean quilt with just enough details but not too much to distract from from the fabric and blocks.

Here is the quilt top that you could see quilting in action.  If you look closely you could see that on each block there are 2 double stitches that goes down and across.



Another view of the front by the window.  Love this shot because it really shows the true colors of the quilt:


For the binding I used a striped fabric - sorry I don't recall the name unfortunately.  I was a little hesitant to use it since it was so bright but when it was put next to the quilt it worked out just fine :).   The colors matched up wonderfully with the playful colors of the blocks.


A peak of the front, back and binding together:


I love this quilt.  It's not in the scope of colors that I usually use, but sometimes it's nice to step out of the comfort zone right? :)

Nope, this quilt does not have a home yet but it is not for sale either.  I may work on another one to put up on Etsy but for now this will have to be the only one.




Quilt Information:
Sweet Blocks
Front: 100% Cotton Prints (Keiki) and Solids (Moda)
Batting: Warm & Natural 100% cotton
Backing: Same materials as the front
Completed Dimension: 44.5″x 62″
Quilting Method: Machine Quilt Straight Stitches
Binding: Machine Sew to Front and Hand Sew to Back