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 

FAL -Hexiestars cushion

My day started with the return of my quilts from Quilt and Stitch Village, which also meant the judges comments! I was braver than I thought I would be taking a peek at them and thankfully they were better than I expected :) Here are the comments for the Brit Print Girls Medallion Quilt...

and the comments for the Never Forgotten improv quilt. I wondered how the judges would react to the improv quilt as it was a very traditional show, so I was delighted that they liked my "refreshingly different interpretation of the theme" :) Also delighted that there were no ticks in the "needs attention" box!

After such positive comments I will be brave enough to enter another quilt competition in the future :) This afternoon I managed to squeeze in some much needed sewing time and finished up my Hexiestars cushion! I'm so pleased to able to cross this one off my FAL list :)

It was really difficult to get a decent picture today as it was so grey outside but I was too impatient to take finished pictures, sorry. I didn't want to compete with the colours of the stars so used a grey variegated Aurifil thread to echo quilt the hexagons...

and create a wonky asterisk through the stars.

I'm thrilled with how it has turned out and I've been overwhelmed with the response to it over on Instagram :) Don't forget the templates are available here if you fancy having a go yourself! I'd love to see your version if you do, so please use #hexiestars over on Instagram or add a picture to our Flickr group :)

Catch you soon x