Blogger's Quilt Festival - Art Quilt - Never Forgotten

It's Blogger's Quilt Festival time! Amy does a fantastic job of organising this online festival to keep us busy when we're sulking about not being at International Quilt Market. Hello, if you're visiting for the first time I hope you'll stay to have a look around :) If you're a regular I apologise for bombarding you with quilts you've already seen :)

I've made quite a few quilts this year so it's been tough to decide which ones to enter. I've settled on two this time around. This is my second entry, my Never Forgotten improv quilt.

I made this quilt to enter my very first quilt show at British Quilt and Stitch Village last month. There was a special theme commemorating World War 1 and the 70th anniversary of D Day. I chose to commemorate members of my family that had served in both of these wars, some that came home injured and some who never returned. There is lots of symbolism in this little quilt e.g. the red pops of colour symbolise a poppy wreath. Two of the red fabrics I chose to use in the "wreath" are stars and stripes, they signify James and George Dawson who were born in USA to British parents. James never came home from France but thankfully, my Great-Grandad George did. There is more information about this quilt and my reasons for making it here if you're interested :) 

I have to say I'm really proud of this little beauty. It finished up around 40" square. Well, square in the loosest sense of the word. I tried squaring it up but it just kept on shrinking and for fear of having to submit it as a mug rug I gave up ;) 

Here are some of my favourite bits in more detail:

The poppy wreath

The stamped centre of the poppy wreath - Never Forgotten

Crazy straight line quilting - tram lines

I used 5 different colours of Aurifil thread for the quilting because I wanted to echo the colours in the fabrics without any one colour overpowering things. This was easily the scariest part for me as I loved the way the top looked when it was finished and was worried that my quilting would ruin it.

Clearer close-up of quilting

In the end I am thrilled with the effect, it has made the quilt really tactile. Improv piecing does not come easily to me as I really prefer a lot of structure and control within my patchwork projects. This project really flowed for me though and I'm sure that's because I felt so emotionally connected with the subject matter. 
Thanks for stopping by. Don't forget to check out all the other awesome quilts in this category :) Catch you soon x 

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Large quilt - Not-so Lonestar

It's Blogger's Quilt Festival time! Amy does a fantastic job of organising this online festival to keep us busy when we're sulking about not being at International Quilt Market. Hello, if you're visiting for the first time I hope you'll stay to have a look around :) If you're a regular I apologise for bombarding you with quilts you've already seen :)

I've made quite a few quilts this year so it's been tough to decide which ones to enter. I've settled on two this time around. This is my first entry, my version of Kaffe Fassett's awesome Not-so Lonestar Quilt.

This quilt was a long time in the making! After a couple of false starts I finally got to grips with it over the Christmas and New Year holidays. It's an absolutely massive quilt, finishing up at over 90" square. To get a better sense of the scale here's a similar picture but with 5'5" Jess in the shot :)

This quilt was a real labour of love! All those diamonds are individually hand cut and there are hundreds of them. I used Innocent Crush by Anna Maria Horner and Soul Blossoms by Amy Butler and just love the way that they play together. As this was such a monster quilt there was no way I was going to attempt quilting myself, so I sent it off to the amazingly talented Trudi Wood for her to work her long-arm magic. The feathers that Trudi quilted have taken this quilt to a whole new level for me.

There are tons more photos in previous posts about this quilt so I won't overload you with them all here. This quilt now inhabits our bedroom and I'm working up the motivation to get a bigger bed to accommodate it more comfortably.

It's not perfectly pieced but it's as good as I'm capable of at this stage in my patchworking life. I think it will be a favourite for a very long time! I smile every time I see it, so that can't be a bad thing :)
Thanks for taking a look around. Don't forget to visit all the other awesome quilts on show in this category. Catch you soon x