Fall 2011 Blogger's Quilt Festival

Welcome to all visitors to the online quilt festival held by Amy'sCreativeSide. Today I would like to share with you a quilt that I just finished yesterday, which I had started many moons ago. With any story we must start at the beginning. Go get some coffee or a drink and a snack too this may take a while. I'm warning you that this post will be heavy in photos. As with any quilt we must start with the fabrics. In December of 2009 I won a bloggy giveaway of gift certificate to an online fabric store. Let me just say that the shop owner was very generous in her gift and I got way more than what I was supposed to have won. I digress. I chose some fabulous Denyse Schmidt fabrics from her Hope Valley line. I set them aside knowing I'd be used them all together to make something special. In March of 2010 inspiration struck me when I saw this and I was inspired! I pulled out my DS Hope Valley and added some charcoal grey Kona as well as some other prints that would be fun and went to work making stars. I made some stars. Then I life got in my way and other quilts wanted to be made so I put this project on the back burner. Every so often I'd make a star or two. By March of this year I had quite a few stars gathered. I decided I'd just go ahead and put them together with the solid grey as filler. It's possible I made a few more stars to make everything fit together nicely. I then set it aside because I was undecided with how to proceed next. I knew I was going to add borders but what? I saw this and this I had an idea turn the 16 patch on point! After this point I don't have many other pictures while I was working on it. Once I had the top done and basted it sat on my kitchen table for practically the whole summer just waiting to be quilted. At first I didn't know how I was going to quilt it. And then I just figured I'd do swirls on the grey parts and outline the stars with "sort of" straight stitching as best I could. I also had a dilemna about the corners of the borders. They were just grey blocks of nothing and I was having a hard time finding any motivation to finish this quilt while being so stumped about a design aspect. As much as other quilters can be an inspiration to me (or you) a quilter has to make things her own and decide on making elements that are special and add just the right touch. That is what I thought these dresdens would do when I sat down and drafted them. Once all the quilting on the quilt was done I quilted them on like a top stitch. Easy peasy. And then the binding came. I chose this really wonderful stripey fabric for my binding because I just knew it was the right one for my quilt. I sewed it on by machine and got the hairbrained idea I would sew it down by hand. For the record I don't sew bindings by hand all that much. It sat on my couch or the floor near the couch for weeks. Then I heard about the Quilt Festival and thought what wonderful motivation to get it done! And I'm proud to say it is done today! And here it is all finished and only 18 months later!! Warning: Gratuitous quilt photos ahead: this photo shows the quilting really well I started this quilt as a picnic quilt for us. I'll have to wait many months before we can go on any picnics however it will be put to good use snuggling up under in the cold months ahead. If I learned anything about this quilt is that good quilts take time to come about. I'm glad it's done and I think it's a lovely quilt. I wouldn't call it a favourite yet but ask me when I'm 80 and I just may say that I loved it to pieces. Thank you for stopping by! I hope to visit many of you as well. Have a great week! Stay warm where ever you are!