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

An awesome finish!

Fair warning, this is a photo heavy post!

Today the postman delivered the most awesome package from Trudi! I had handed over my precious Not-so Lonestar quilt to Trudi at the last meeting of the East Midlands Modern Quild Guild. My vague instructions to Trudi for quilting were "all-over feathers, just do your thing." I've seen Trudi's work in person before, it is fabulous but nothing really prepared me for how awesome my quilt would look once she had worked her magic! When I opened the parcel this was my first peek at what was in store for me.

There was much squealing and petting of fabric. There were almost, but not quite, tears and lots of crack your cheekbone grinning! Take a look at these next few photos of the corner stars...

 ...I mean WOW!

There were all kinds of bias issues in the centre of those stars but you'd never know it now! Here's the centre of the Lonestar... again no sign of my dodgy bias issues. Those feathers are perfect!!

Here's a close-up...

...the texture is amazing!! I asked for a grey thread as I wanted it to blend in with the riot of colour in the fabrics. Aurifil to the rescue of course ;) 

I had cleared my afternoon to make sure I could get on with the binding, all 10 and a bit metres of it! I was lazy in the end and applied the binding by machine. I justified that to myself by wanting it to stand up to the many washes that it will undergo in its lifetime. I fully intend for this to be a well loved and well used quilt! I took my time to make sure it was as neat as it could be. Front..

 and back.

Then it was time to dress the bed :) I think we need a bigger bed. It's very difficult to get the whole quilt in the shot!

Here's a final shot of it from another angle :)

It's safe to say that this is my most favourite quilt to date! Trudi's quilting has pushed this quilt into the stratosphere! I am so proud of our combined efforts :) Enough of my gushing for now. Thank you Trudi, you rock! Catch you soon x

Jubilation!

Hello All, I can't begin to tell you all just how excited I am right now! I've bored the crowd on Instagram over the last few weeks with pictures of my Not-so-Lonestar quilt and today that will cease (for the time being anyway) because I've finished it!!!!!!!!! I can't believe it but it's true :)

I completely love it! I feel a bit like Bruce Forsyth today when I say that this is my favourite quilt to date.

 It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, there are plenty of duff points and bias issues but the fabric is so gorgeous and busy that those things don't really matter. I actually feel a bit bereft that it's finished. Well, not quite finished because it still has to be quilted but I'm not doing that myself...no chance, this beaut will be heading over to Trudi to work her long-arm magic :)

It's really tricky to capture the scale of this quilt so I took a pic of it with Jess by the side as a guide, she's about 5'5" :)

 When I took this project back out of the WIP box at Christmas I was really anxious that I wouldn't have enough fabric left to complete it as I'd started it in 2011 and wasn't sure how easy it would be to get hold of Innocent Crush and Soul Blossoms now. Thankfully the angst was unnecessary as I have this lovely pile of fabric left!

I'm so pleased I'll be able to use these fabrics in other projects in the years to come :) I think you'll be pleased that I've got all this left too because it means that I'm feeling generous with the scraps from the making of the quilt! There's 290g of scraps of pretty much all the prints I used in the quilt. They're all really useable sizes so I'm sure they'll be very handy for scrappy projects.

As a thank you for all the encouragement I'm giving this lovely scrap pile away! You get up to 3 chances to win:
1. To be in with a chance to win just leave a comment here.
2. If you're a follower, new or regular, leave another comment.
3. Share the giveaway news and leave another comment here letting me know you've shared.

Please make sure I can contact you if you happen to win, (no-reply bloggers I mean you!) I'll draw a winner with Random Number Generator on Friday 24th January 2014 around 8pm (GMT).

Thanks for cheering me on from the sidelines :) Catch you soon x

Edited to add: Giveaway is now closed. The winner was Mrs FlyingBlind - Hadley.

Eye candy

Two posts in one day, will wonders never cease! I'm just so excited with my progress on my Not-so Lonestar quilt that I had to show you!! This project is a slow burner as it's so labour intensive but over the last few days I've managed to complete the first quarter. I will most definitely be sending it out to a long-arm quilter when it is finished as it's going to be a monster.

The colours aren't great in the photos but in real life they are beautiful! Here's a close-up of the corner star.

Here's the point of the large star. Not bad even if I do say so myself ;) 

This photo gives you a better idea of the scale of the quilt, it makes this double sofa bed look fairly tiny.

So, only another 3 quarters to go....It's still going to be a while in the making but I'm so pleased to finally see some real progress :) Catch you soon x