Friday, May 16, 2014

Blogger's Quilt Festival Spring 2014-Modern Quilts

I can't believe it's already time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival. I had so much fun seeing all of the amazing quilts last fall. I can't wait to see what everyone will add this time. Be sure to go check out Amy's blog to see some great quilts! This year I've decided to enter "Bloomin' Onion" in the Modern Quilts category and "Penguins on Parade" in the Original Design category (I'll share that in part 2!)

AmysCreativeSide.com

If you're a regular reader of my blog you might remember "Bloomin' Onion". I really wanted to do spring pictures, but ended up photographing this quilt during a blizzard. Since spring has finally come to Iowa I decided to do another photo shoot with this quilt. I'm writing up the pattern for this quilt, and I think this will be the cover shot. When the pattern came to me I had the name Chrysanthemum in my head. I decided to name the finished quilt "Bloomin' Onion" due to the onion backing, but it doesn't make sense for the pattern to be called that.



This year the members of my quilt guild were given a paint chip and challenged to make a quilt using at least three colors from our chip. I struggled for months to figure out what to do with my pink paint chip. One morning I woke up with the idea of a flower made using the drunkard's path block. Even after sketching the design for this quilt it wouldn't leave me alone. I pieced the top in four days (which included me going to my day job.)



Thankfully the spring quilt retreat was that weekend. We went to the quilt shop near the retreat center and I found some red onion fabric on the clearance rack. I couldn't believe how perfectly it matched my top. Saturday I basted the quilt and managed to do all of the circular quilting before the end of the day. This was my first time to do circular quilting. There is room for improvement, but I think I'll be using this style of quilting again in the future.


For a quilt label I used the fabrics from the front to make a fabric "paint" chip. Up against the white you can actually tell that the light fabric really is pink.


14 comments:

  1. This is a stunning finish! Love that first photo too, under the pink blossoms. I have wanted to try a circular quilt finish since reading about the method some time back, and here you have found the perfect quilt for it. Beauty:-)

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    1. Thank you so much. I really wanted to try circular quilting too so I designed the quilt to let me do that.

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  2. This quilt is absolutely fabulous! I truly love this. The colors are phenomenal and I love your pattern! That background is so quirky and awesome as well!

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  3. Thanks so much for stopping by. I had a lot of fun working on this quilt.

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  4. congratulations on your beautiful quilt work

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  5. Very pretty! Love how striking this quilt is.:)

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    1. Thanks. I'm really happy with how it turned out.

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  6. Dropping by from BQF, what a great colour palette and the onion backing fabric is too wonderful! :D

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    1. Thanks for stopping by. I had a lot of fun playing with the different shades of fabric from the paint chip.

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  7. Wow! Beautiful quilt! I love how it just "echoes". Reminds me of when a pebble is tossed in a pond with the circle quilting. Just beautiful.

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    1. Thank you. I never thought of it like pond ripples. Now I want to try making a version in shades of blue.

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