Thursday, May 23, 2013

Shades of Gray Quilt: My Blogger's Quilt Festival Entry

Shades of Gray and Green
45.5" x 54.5"
Pieced and quilted by me

In a mad dash of sewing the past few days, I managed to cross two things of my list at once. I finished my Shades of Gray quilt, made using charm squares from a swap I hosted last August. This gave me a new quilt to enter in the Blogger's Quilt Festival and meant that I'd finished my May Lovely Year of Finishes Goal (9 days early!!). Hooray!

I'm entering my Shades of Gray and Green quilt in the...you guessed it!...two-color quilt category. The quilt is made up of 5" squares--120 of them--and then each square has one cathedral window-style green corner, which creates the curve. I'll post a tutorial on how I did it next week. I used three different greens for the corners.
 For the quilting, I free motion quilted three wavy lines through each gray diagonal "stripe." It looked like it was missing something, so I quilted sort of a curved zigzag through the green diagonal stripes as well. Because it's a charm square quilt, there was so much going on with the fabrics that I didn't want the quilting to stand out.
My inspiration for this design came from this quilt by Megan at Tales of Ineptitude. My original plan for the charm squares had been to make half-square triangles with gray and green, and then do some sort of chevron design. But when I saw Megan's red and gray quilt, I changed my mind. I really liked the effect of the smaller colored corners.
 It's been raining all week here, so yesterday I dodged the raindrops and wandered through my neighbors' backyards looking for photography options. So if you see puddles in any photos, that's why. Happily, my quilt dried quite nicely after its rainy morning adventure!

The backing is a gray and white pin dot that I bought on a Frugal Friday from the Quilting Lodge.

If you haven't already, head over to Amy's Creative Side to check out the entries in the Blogger's Quilt Festival. It's like your own personal quilt show!



Also linking up to the Year of Lovely Finishes, which prompted me to (start and) finish this quilt during the month of May, and Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story.

16 comments:

  1. I love how the green is wavy on the longer sides of the triangle. It adds a whole other dimension to the quilt, another texture almost. Beautiful quilt!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I really love this quilt!! Love the colours ! www.emmalinebags.com

    ReplyDelete
  3. This really turned out well, and I, too, love the splash of color on the edge of the gray, rather than a HST. Good call. And love the quilting--so much motion!

    Your photographs are lovely--perhaps all that rain made things shinier and brighter for your photos!

    Elizabeth E.
    opquilt.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. Love that Cathedral windows effect! I did something similar on a small project but I can see where it has huge impact on big projects... Fabulous result!

    ReplyDelete
  5. This looks so great! I love the cathedral corners! Thanks for linking to me :-)

    ReplyDelete
  6. I did a shades of grey quilt but I love how you incorporated the green, brilliant!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Fabulous finish - hope it inspires me to do the same!

    ReplyDelete
  8. This looks awesome. I love doing that cathedral window technique! You did a fantastic job!

    ReplyDelete
  9. I love your quilt. That cathedral window technique is awesome. Was it difficult to do? Great color choices too.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I have been enjoying this quilt, your quilting is a great compliment to the design. And I am always drawn to green and grey, maybe I should use them myself one day soon.

    ReplyDelete
  11. beautiful work on this quilt. i love green so much and i love how it pops out of the grays in this quilt.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Love the grays and greens coming together in a quilt.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Great quilt! Love your pics too:) It looks so perfect outside.

    ReplyDelete
  14. So very pretty. Great (early) finish! ;)

    ReplyDelete
  15. I love this quilt and how it turned out. Great spot to photograph it as well!

    ReplyDelete