Twirling Trellis

I'm finally sharing a few pictures of my Twirling Trellis quilt, featured in the current issue of Modern Quilts Unlimited.

This is one of my favorite quilts ever. It was so fun to design, piece and quilt. I think the thing that I enjoy most about this quilt is that I didn't expand the pinwheel's into the outside white sections. It just adds another layer of interest.

Like so many of my quilts, this one is foundation pieced. This one is the perfect size for a wall hanging or a table topper.

This was the first quilt that I tried ruler work on my longarm. I stitched in the ditch around the yellow and pink, and did some ruler work in the lime green.

This quilt was made entirely of Michael Miller Cotton Couture solids. I find that the Michael Miller solids have such a nice, soft hand feel. They're one of my favorite solids to work with. 

Riley Blake Challenge Quilt

Like most people that I talked to, I struggled to find inspiration for this challenge. The fabrics were difficult for me, but I dug deep into my sketches of quilt ideas and pulled out a quilt design that I thought would work well. I have to say, I'm pleased with the results. Sometimes it takes a challenge to get you to push your boundaries. 

I'm calling this quilt, "Shootin' the Breeze" because the pinwheels look like they're spinning in the wind. 

I designed this paper pieced pattern a while ago and pulled it out for this challenge. I struggled with how to quilt it. Originally I wanted to quilt each pinwheel individually, either with custom quilting or with a spiral around each to emphasize the movement. My swirls aren't the greatest, so after I unpicked my first attempt, I went back and did some wavy lines to make it look like the wind was blowing. 

This quilt finishes at 35" square and will make a nice wall hanging or table topper. I used So Fine! thread for the quilting and Quilter's Dream Cotton for the batting. 

Twirling Trellis - Modern Quilts Unlimited

If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram you may have already seen my Twirling Trellis quilt, which is on the cover of Modern Quilts Unlimited! This magazine is hitting mailboxes right now and can be found at Barns & Noble, Joann's and local quilt stores.

I'm super excited to share this particular quilt with you. This one might be one of my favorite quilts right now and can't wait to get it back. I was in such a time crunch to finish this by the deadline that I didn't get any pictures of the finished quilt.

Oh, and I have another quilt in the running to be on the cover of Quilty. You can vote for my quilt - Cover 1- here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZHZN93H

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

Riley Blake Challenge Quilt Top

The Christmas break was nice, I didn't have to worry about work or school, so I could spend lots of time quilting. In addition to finishing my Confetti quilt, which I'll show as soon as I can get a few good pictures of it, I also got most of my MQG Riley Blake Challenge quilt finished. A few more hours here and there this week and I managed to complete the top of my quilt.

I added in a solid purple and orange to go with the blue chevron and the orange dot. I plan on using the gray and white stripe for the binding. I did order more of the charcoal solid from Riley Blake for the background, but the rest pretty much was from the bundle provided. I did steal my aunt's blue chevron fabric since I needed a bit more of that because I didn't want to change the direction of the fabric.

After I finished the top, I realized the blue chevron fabric really gave the pinwheels a lot of movement, a very pleasant surprise.  Now to think about how to quilt this bad boy up. Hmmmm...

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.