Blogger's Quilt Festival Entry

The leaves are changing colors, the stores are full of bags of snack-sized candy ready to be eaten, and every recipe I've made in the last two weeks has included pumpkin.
You know what that means: It's time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival! 

I struggled with figuring out what to enter this time around because I haven't actually finished any quilts in a while. Instead, I was busy growing this little guy, who was born in August:

(And no, I actually didn't make him a new quilt--I've loved the nursery decor I made for my first son, so I used it for the next two as well. I've been busy working on quilts for his older two brothers' beds...you can see the progress on those here. He will get his own quilt down the road when he's old enough to pick something out!)

But you actually came here to see my entry for the show, didn't you? 

I finished this quilt back in June, so my niece received it two months before her first birthday (pretty good, considering it was supposed to be a baby present!). 

I'm entering it in the Original Design category for the BQF.

Patchwork and Pennants

Designed, stitched and machine quilted by me

48" x 52"

The story behind this quilt (you can read the longer version, with photos, here):
Little Rachel is the youngest of three girls. I made the other two matching Yellow Brick Road quilts (Atkinson Designs) using a fat quarter bundle I bought at Quilt Market Sample Spree back in 2005. I really wanted Rachel's to "go" with the others but was pretty much out of fabric from the original bundle. And I was ready to branch out and design my own quilt rather than simply following a pattern. I developed this patchwork and pennant design and then took the fabric scraps I had left from her sisters' quilts and bought tonal prints and solids in coordinating colors. A couple pennants in each row are 3-D; the rest are fused and zigzag stitched in place.
I quilted it on my home machine and added a scrappy binding. You can see the quilting detail below and read more about it here:

Thanks for stopping by!