Wednesday, August 31, 2016

August OMG complete!

Since I didn't finish this in July, I was bound (pun intended) and determined to finish it up for my August One Monthly Goal over at Red Letter Quilts! And I did, with a couple days to spare. I do love how the quilting on the black background came out, as well as the pop of the colored binding. 

Here's a close-up of the center, where you can (kind of) see my quilting motifs. Each diamond (purple/yellow, orange/dark green, etc.) had a different motif, several taken from Angela Walter's excellent Free Motion Quilting book. I used gray thread as a neutral that wouldn't take away from any of the color. 

The four side background pieces have quilting that echoes the star edge, with lines 1/2" apart. 

I debated for the corners. Did I want to continue the echo quilting, and essentially quilt right angles in each corner, or did I want the lines to radiate out from the star point? I went for radiating and I do like it. Incidentally, I did mark these lines but didn't mark the side background lines. 

I chose a gray/black polka dot for the backing. It's hard to see the quilting really well in the photo, but you can see the star shape! Considering how scrappy this quilt was, a colorful scrappy binding seemed like the only choice. :) 

Sunday, August 7, 2016

August OMG Goal

Well, I didn't finish my July One Monthly Goal over at Red Letter Quilts, which was to machine quilt this star quilt.



I got about halfway done and then decided it wasn't worth giving up sleep to finish! Here's a peek at what it looks like so far--I have all of the stars done and one section of black finished (look closely...it doesn't show up really well in this photo!). I chose four different free motion designs for the star points, just for practice, and then I'm doing straight lines for the black sections. The pieced parts are so busy that the quilting isn't really evident, and that's fine, but I do like the straight lines on the black background sections! 

My August OMG is to finish this quilt--finish the machine quilting and then bind it. I'm planning to do a colorful scrappy binding. Here's hoping I have better luck this month! 



Tuesday, August 2, 2016

My Frequency Quilt

Back in the spring, I was lucky enough to have a design featured in Modern Patchwork magazine. I called the quilt "Frequency," inspired by the spacing of the color strips. 

 I'll be honest, I really like this quilt. It's simple in both design and construction, and the fabric really makes the quilt. I used the Color Weave collection from Contempo Studio (part of Benartex). The fabrics have a subtle weave on them, creating texture. The line consists of nine colors in light, medium and dark versions, plus white, black, and two grays. (I also like how Modern Patchwork photographed it (above) and how they photographed it in the opposite direction from how I photographed it (below).)

I will admit that for how simple this quilt is, I did my best to screw it up several times. I was chain piecing to speed the process along because I was working under a deadline and kept making dumb mistakes, sewing the wrong size pieces together. Ugh! Nothing like making something harder than it needs to be! 

I used straight line quilting, which I think worked really well for the design. (And conveniently, the easiest kind of machine quilting!)

There's an interview on Benartex's blog today with me about this quilt, which talks about the backing (shown above) and the inspiration behind the quilt (hint: it's based on the runner below, which I also designed). Check out the interview here


Find Modern Patchwork here.