Blogger's Quilt Festival: Spectacle quilt

It's that time again- the fall edition of the Blogger's Quilt Festival has begun over at Amy's Creative Side.  I have mine listed in the baby quilt category! Can't wait to peruse the quilty goodness in Blogland!  Welcome to any newbies to my blog, and thanks for stopping by :)

A newly finished quilt to share with you today.  Isn't it funny that when fall hits and everything around me starts to wilt and die, I always seem to get a surge of creativity?  Lately I have been ON FIRE, people!  Sewing this and that, knitting my brains out, and a bunch of quilts coming together.  Lovin' it.  Just wish there were more hours in a day!

And I THINK this may be my new favoritest quilt of all time!!  (Yes, this is the part where I start to get all braggy.  But seriously.  Check this out. )

I can't think of a single thing I don't like on this quilt, or that I would do differently if I had the chance.  Which is rare for me (overanalyze much?).   I made this for a baby boy on his way into the world, but I am thinking that he may get a Gap gift certificate instead ;)  It all started with inspiration from this quilt, by Blue Elephant Stitches.  Now I am usually a girl who digs symmetry...total Type A personality, like to control everything, so on and so forth.  But that said, my favorite quilts to make, or look at, for that matter, are often the ones that have very little rhyme or reason.  

This one was just like that.  I took some scraps in blues and greens out of the overflowing bin, cut them into triangles, and decided to use two tones of grey to piece them together randomly.  I used Kona-something (charcoal?) and Alexander Henry Heath.  I had no plan, just assembled the top row by row, and had so much fun in the process as I slashed and hacked and stitched away.

I knew the quilting should be unstructured as well, and decided on a wonky free flow grid, somewhat mimicking that in the Heath. I used a light blue cotton thread, which of course I ran out of half way through the vertical quilting.  Le sigh.

Well, as often is the case for me, unexpected mess ups stimulate creativity (i.e. being too lazy to go to the store to buy more matching thread, I came up with a Plan B).  So, I decided to add some turquoise and goldenrod thread lines to the grid to fill in the spaces, and a small segment of hand quilting as well.  In the end, I think this adds so much to the finished product, we are just going to pretend it was a product of genius instead of laziness, okay?

The binding- I used a Sunkissed Sweetwater texty print cut on the bias.  I am normally one for hand stitched binding, but have dabbled in machine sewn too, with little success.  But this time- total triumph!  I used a WALKING FOOT, people...geez, whey haven't I tried that before??  Made all the difference.  It turned out perfect.

Last but not least- the backing!  How fun is this?

What is it?  It's a piece of a sheet, bought at Winners (Canada's equivalent to TJ Maxx), made by Colin and Justin.  What can I say?  It makes me so happy. Perfect amount of funky fun for this quilt. And I have plenty left for another (or two!).

This quilt measures in at about 40" by 50".  Annnnnnd I think that's all I have to say about that.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Kristie :)