Sunday, May 18, 2014

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Spring 2014


I have really loved the Blogger's Quilt Festival in recent years, because as Instagram has become more popular, I like to follow the #quiltmarket posts and drool over all the upcoming fabrics...the Quilt Festival helps me get through not being at Market in person to pet the pretties. Plus I really like getting the opportunity to find more blogs to follow :)

Here's my entry to the Festival...Emerald Ikat - entered into the Original Design Quilts category.



I drew this up a few years ago and then sat on it for a while. I just submitted it to Fons and Porter's Love of Quilting last fall on a whim, and when they accepted it I realized I had to figure it all out. I pieced mine using templates, but I also created a paper piecing version for the magazine.



I personally don't really like to paper piece, but I can't deny the accuracy. I got some pretty perfect points without it though!



The thing that I like the least about making projects for magazines is the tight turnaround between the acceptance of your submission and when the project is due. I have a day job that I work about 55 hours a week on average for, and I don't usually make my projects ahead of time because I don't have the funds/time to just make all the quilts that come into my head. Nor do I have oodles of people to give quilts to. So I want to know that a project needs to be made before I get started. That usually means I end up with a marathon of late-night quilting.



My cats usually think they're being helpful during these late night sessions. For this particular quilt I even sent an apology to the editor saying it would probably need to be lint-rolled when it arrived on their end, because there's just not an inch of cat-free space in my tiny apartment. Luckily, her response was that they love cats and totally understand that cats love fabric too! :)



I took pictures just outside the post office before mailing when I realized I wouldn't see the quilt again for about 6 months. It's a really big post office and I got quite a few stares and several questions. I usually take it as an opportunity to educate people about quilting and show them that young people can quilt too!



The backing is a fabulous curtain from IKEA - it's a polyester blend, but I took a chance and it worked out just fine. It was a pain in the butt to baste though, so fair warning. The binding is a black crosshatch from an unknown line [I have several in my stash from different collections, and I totally should have labeled them!].

Enjoy the rest of the Blogger's Quilt Festival, and thanks for visiting!



Emerald Ikat
Size: approximately 48"x 64"
Fabric: mixture of low volume black and white prints, various Kona green solids, various green small-scale prints, black Oval Elements, black Domino Dots, a black and white polka dot, and the charcoal star flower print from the Washi collection.
Quilting: squiggly lines following the diamonds within the white sections

14 comments:

  1. Stunning! And i've not seen that Ikea fabric before.

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  2. How pretty and congratulations on the magazine piece! :)

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  3. I like the quilt a lot. A question: how long a turn around do the mags give you on a project like this. It would seem the more complicated, the longer you'd get, but my hunch is that isn't so.

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  4. Love this so much! Great design and awesome color choices too! Totally drooling over that IKEA fabric.

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  5. This is so striking! And all that sharp angle work - your piecing is so precise! Gorgeous.

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  6. So glad you didn’t end up with a cat-astrophe when your cat was helping you sew!

    I love everything about your quilt- beautiful geometric design , great colours , and the back is to die for !

    This one deserves to be in magazine! Congratulations.

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  7. Beautiful! Love both the colors, and the design!

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  8. This is really cool! Love the fabrics you used!

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  9. I love this quilt! This is the only reason I bought that magazine :) Beautiful design!

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  10. Very effective visually, like the design a lot! Nice work on all the perfect points, too!

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