Blogger Quilt Festival - Confetti

Wow, it was hard to pick just two quilts to showcase in the Blogger Quilt Festival. To start, I decide to showcase my Confetti quilt.

This quilt was actually made as part of a Bee - the Simply Solids Bee to be exact. I set out a bunch of neutral fabrics with a couple of brights - a navy, lime and dark pink.

I absolutely fell in love with the top when I finished it, but I think the quilting is one of the main reasons I decided to use this quilt in the festival. It took a TON of ruler work on my longarm, and I'm pretty sure my hand was deformed for over a week after the fact, but it was so worth it. I randomly drew a section using my ruler, outlined it a 1/4" and then filled it in with 1/4" lines parallel to one of the lines in the shape.

The hardest part of this quilt was assembling the top. When blocks came in, they were all improv blocks, but some had more white space than others. Some had a bunch of smaller pieces while others had some large ones. I couldn't figure out how to make them work, until several people suggested that I cut up some of the bee blocks to make it work. Gasp! How could I cut up something someone had worked so hard on?

But then Victoria Findlay Wolfe came to visit the Boston MQG and she said that she cut up bee blocks to make one of her quilts. If Victoria could do it, so could I.

This quilt finishes at 51" x 50" and was made with a bunch of assorted solids. I quilted it using So Fine #50 - Pearl. I used two layers of Quilters Dream Orient.

Confetti

Over the Christmas break I managed to finish my Simply Solids Bee quilt. The quilting took a while, as I'm sure you can guess by looking at it.

Every 1/4" of this quilt has been quilted. This was only my second time doing ruler work on a quilt and am quite proud of how I did even though it's not perfect.

I sketched out how I envisioned the quilting to go and improvised as I went. I wanted a shattered, broken piece of glass look to the sections of straight line quilting. Each section was framed out first and filled in with straight lines roughly 1/4" apart.

I have to say, I'm really in love with this quilt. I think because it's so different for me. While I have done a number of improv quilts before, this one might be my favorite.

I tried to sneak outside this week and grab a few pictures of it with some natural light and barely got a few pictures before I began to freeze my butt off, so this is what I got for now.

I even made a scrappy binding with some of the random white/cream scraps and a few of the lime, pomegranate and navy fabrics. I never piece my binding with straight seams, I always piece them on the bias. It makes it easier to hand sew it to the back. But for this quilt, it just called for more straight lines instead of all of the angles. Let's just say that I won't be doing that again any time soon.


Quilt Stats:
51" x 50"
Fabrics: assorted solids
Thread: assorting for piecing (since it was a bee) and So Fine #50 - Pearl for machine quilting
Batting: Two layers of Quilter's Dream Orient