Blogger's Quilt Festival Spring 2012

Blogger's Quilt Festival Spring 2012 at Amy's Creative Side

     My name is Stephanie and I am so excited to be participating in the Blogger's Quilt Festival for the very first time!  I want to thank Amy for this truly amazing quilt festival!  I love quilts and the Modern movement and I am part of our local Modern Quilt Guild in Knoxville.  I have enjoyed looking at all the quilts over the past couple of years, but I never entered one and this spring, I decided to change that.  It is truly amazing to see all the wonderful quilters and their designs and I am so inspired by all of them! 

     The quilt I am featuring is called "Orange Slice" and it is the very first big quilt that I made.  It is approximately 60" x 80".  I had only been sewing and quilting for about a year and had done mostly smaller baby quilts.  Then, in January 2011, I decided to join the ps i quilt Postage Stamp Quilt Along.  I was so excited to do a quilt along, but didn't know what kind of jelly roll or fabric to use.  Some were using the Sweetwater line featured for the quilt along and some were going very scrappy. 

     I only had two jelly rolls at the time and I just loved the "Fresh Squeezed" line by Sandy Gervais by Moda, in my stash.  It was so bright and yummy and of course, I live in Tennessee...Go Vols!!  As I looked at some of the others' fabric choices, I noticed that many were using a very light, neutral background with their jelly rolls.  While that was great for some lines of fabric, I wanted to go bright and bold!  So after some debating, I found the RK Kona Orange, which was an absolute perfect match for this!

     I cut up all the fabric, put all the colors together, followed all directions and came up with this beautiful quilt top.  I had no idea at the time it would be so striking with the movement of color! 

     I decided to use some of the left over strips on the back, paired with RK Kona Turquoise. 

     Then, I was trying to decide how I wanted to quilt this quilt. I held on to it and waited and waited.  In November 2011, about nine months after I had finished the quilt top, I found a wonderful long arm quilter, Sharon, who was just starting out and had done some amazing work on charity quilts for our guild. After talking with her, she found this fun, citrus quilt pattern to quilt my quilt! It is absolutely perfect and just what I wanted!!! 

     It turned out so beautiful!

     I decided to bind the quilt with some of the fabric I had bought in the "Fresh Squeezed" line that was turquoise with orange flowers.  This fabric was perfect to tie the whole quilt together. 

     Now, when I do binding, to be different, I have learned to use what some call, a feather stitch, on my quilts.  I love this stitch!!  It is unusual and adds a touch of flair.

     The quilt along was such a wonderful learning experience!   I am very proud of all the work that went into this first big quilt and it is, by far, my favorite!  Recently, I took my quilt to our KMQG quilt retreat. We had such a wonderful time and there just happened to be a beautiful sunset up in the mountains, so I got several pictures of my quilt on the porch. 

     Thank you for taking the time to stop by!  I hope I have inspired you to quilt something beautiful!