Quilt Festival - Fall 2009

I'm excited to be a part of the Quilt Festival hosted by Amy at Park City Girl! Anyone can participate, which is a good thing because I am slightly lacking in quilting skills and I know there are a ton of talented quilters online. I have many, many projects in process (I am easily side-tracked by fabric -- so much so that sometimes I think I love it more than quilting!) but this is the latest quilt I finished:

The quilt was made for my cousin, Alison, to celebrate the birth of her first little one, Dane Alan. I should ammend that statement... He's adorable but there's nothing "little" about him -- he came into the world weighing just shy of 10 pounds! I was inspired by a quilt I found on Flickr, pieced and quilted by Cristin of Sew This Is My Life. I liked the look of her quilt, but was skeptical that I would have enough fabric to mimic the bands so I somewhat departed. Turns out if I was any good at math I would've known what I had on hand was just perfect. Oh well, doing it my way made it a bit more mine and less of a copy. *grin*



I couldn't tell you what line the prints are from, but I know the navy blue came from Hobby Lobby. Hehehe... The striped back and binding are a tent sale snag from a local quilt store. I cut 5" squares from the prints and random size bands of navy. The quilt is actually smaller than I intended and has quilting that was added after the fact. Initially I stitched straight lines in navy blue and attached the striped navy on the bias for a barbershop pole effect. It looked quite neat, but for some odd reason I attached the 3" binding with an 1/8" seam! I was so annoyed with myself that I put the quilt away for two weeks while I determined how to salvage it. In the end, instead of ripping out all those stitches, I cut the binding off the quilt, squared things up, and attached a brand new binding. Because Baby Dane is darn cute. And Alison is my cousin. And, because I wanted to add the red wavy-line quilting. The blue thread matched the background SO well that the quilting all but disappeared. Mistakes all around, but I'm happy with how it turned out.

A word on the back -- I had major tension issues while quilting this blanket. Not the blanket's fault in the least... The week before, I jammed and bent my needle into the catch plate. It was horrific -- and apparently the machine was still smarting from the experience. We made it through though, and I was pleased to present Baby Dane with a handmade quilt...for his 1 month milestone. ;o)

Doing the "happy shuffle"...