Blogger's Quilt Festival Spring 2015 - Lone Star Rising Quilt

Welcome to the Blogger's Quilt Festival Spring 2015! Today I am entering a second quilt to the Festival for the first time. 

This is my Lone Star Rising quilt which I am entering in the Modern Quilt Category.

This is also the first time I have ever entered a quilt that I have previously posted about as I usually keep the BQF for 'Premieres'!

I made this quilt earlier this year for issue 9 of Quilt Now magazine. The editor Katy specifically asked for a Lone Star design and having never tackled one before I jumped at the chance.

I chose to chop off 4 of the star's 'arms' and place it in the top left hand corner so that it would look like a rising sun - hence the name.
It is made entirely from Carolyn Friedlander's fabric, the star is all 'Doe' with the background and binding from her previous ranges.
I free-motion quilted a trailing leaf pattern all over the quilt which contained 4 different types of leaf.

My original post about this quilt is here.
The quilt only arrived back with me a few days ago and is now firmly ensconced on my bed as our official 'bed quilt'. But I did manage to take one new photo of it for this post...

For those of you who like all the stats it measures 181cm square (71 inches) and was pieced and quilted with a green Aurifil 50 number 5017.

Off you go back to the Blogger's Quilt Festival now!
And thanks again Amy for all your hard work hosting this amazing event!

Lone Star Rising Quilt

I'm delighted to be sharing my Lone Star Rising quilt with you today!
I made this quilt at the beginning of the year for Quilt Now magazine. It is the first Lone Star I have made and I totally fell in love with the pattern. I can see a few more Lone Star quilts in my future!

There are quite a few off-centre Lone Stars around but most of them knock off just one or two of the arms. I decided to knock off 4 arms and place my star right up in the top left corner. When I put it there it reminded me of the way I used to draw a sun when I was tiny. So then it became a rising sun, hence the title Lone Star Rising.

It's also a bit of an homage to Carolyn Friedlander as I used fabrics from her 'Doe' line for the star, a crosshatch from 'Architextures' for the background and one from 'Botanics' for the binding! There's a plain black and white gingham on the back as it seems like quite a masculine quilt and I didn't want the back to spoil that!

I was very happy to see that it made the cover too, albeit as an inset (that main cover quilt totally deserves the limelight!).

And they did some lovely shots inside too.

Here it is on my own bed. It's pretty big (for my quilts anyway!) at 71 inches square, and my husband's a big fan of this one, so I think it might end up staying here when it's returned to me.

I always forget to talk about the thread I use, I am pretty much exclusively using Aurifil 50 for both piecing and quilting these days. One of the things I love most about it for quilting is that you get so much more on a bobbin than regular cotton, meaning less ends to thread in later!

I used this pale green shade (5017) that I bought from Sheila at last year's Stitch Gathering. Sheila sells Aurifil online if you are looking for some. I would thoroughly recommend it.

There was quite a bit of negative space on this quilt which is good for showing off some fancy FMQ. I decided to go for an overall design and not get too fancy, so I quilted 4 different leaves in a trailing pattern. I love doing leaves so this was easy but lots of fun and I think a bit different. Nominally they are holly, oak, beech and sycamore, but don't look too closely, they are not botanically correct!

I hope you get a chance to see the magazine and the way I have tackled the piecing. I think I came up with a neat, quick, strip-piecing method that takes the fiddles out of this design. The size of the diamonds means it grows pretty quickly too.

This last shot is taken against our new mini barn that my husband built. It's the perfect backdrop to photograph my quilts!
You can see more shots of the barn (during and after construction) and his design ideas for Tiny Houses here.

Squaring the Circle Quilt

There are 2 reasons why I am so excited to show you this quilt.

One is that it made the cover of the latest issue of Quilt Now magazine!!

This is my first project for Katy and so I was really honoured to be the cover star! Especially after flicking through the mag and seeing all the awesome competition in there!!
There is just page after page of amazing projects! So if you haven't checked this magazine out yet, do yourself a favour and go buy a copy!

And the second reason is that this quilt has been accepted for the QuiltCon exhibition!!!

I was so surprised and pleased when I got the email a couple of weeks back to say my quilt had been accepted. I only entered this one quilt. But when I saw all the #quiltconreject photos on Instagram I was really shocked that mine had been selected! Part of me does worry that they'll be disappointed and change their mind when they receive it! But I think it's normal to feel a little undeserving in this way.

I have mixed feelings about entering quilts in to shows as I'm not sure I believe in judging artistic pursuits.
In 'My First Age of Quilting' I did have quilts in The Quilter's Guild shows and also a contemporary quilt show at the Shipley Art Gallery in Gateshead. I remember the feeling of pride when I went to visit and saw my quilt hanging as part of the exhibition. So I think the fact that I will be going all the way to Austin for QuiltCon in February, and the fact this is the Modern Quilt Community, a movement I feel very happy to be a part of, spurred me on.

The quilt pattern my seem familiar to some of you. That's because it is a large version of this mini I made a few year's back for a swap. This one was called Solid Science and here is a post that tells you where my inspiration came from.
The other reason it may look familiar is that we use this mini for our Stitch Gathering logo!
I always planned to make a large version of it as I loved the optical illusion effect. And then I bought some Drunkard's Path dies for my Sizzix Big Shot at FOQ and a full sized quilt using patterned and low volume fabrics seemed too good an idea to resist.

I tried really hard with the quilting as I already had an idea to enter this for QuiltCon. I FMQ'd the spirals first, leaving the pale squares free. I was pleased with how it looked, there are some pebbles tucked here and there filling spaces too small for spirals. I had half a plan to matchstick quilt the squares, but when it came to it I was too short on time and worried about starting something that I couldn't finish. So I decided to quilt these large square spirals. FMQing straight lines is way harder than wavy lines and I did rush it a bit so I wasn't very pleased with the result.

But it's ok, I'm dealing with it. And I know I'm still on a very long FMQ learning curve!

Over all I really love the quilt and will be very proud to stand in front of it at QuiltCon!