Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Bloggers Quilt Festival

Hooray! I love a contest. And one with prizes is even better.
Here is the quilt story I'd like to enter into the Bloggers Quilt Festival.
My "Renaissance" quilt was a lesson for me. When I first looked through the Moda turnover package "Renaissance", I was heartbroken. I had bought the pak online and was less than enthusiastic about it when I received it. The colours, although beautiful, were not to my taste. Some of the retro style prints were not to my taste. But what should I do?
I'm just too frugal to toss them. I don't really want to stash them because they'll never see the light of day again. So, I made them into a quilt. There. I feel better now.
First I made a trip to the LQS to pick up coordinates to flesh out the turnover triangles. I'm not really fussy on matching angles and points and the such so I left the tunovers whole and made them into HST with print and plain fabrics.
Then I lined them up, trying not to put the same print beside itself. I wasn't going to have enough with just the turnover squares, so, I tossed in a full plain square here and there. I had plenty of those since I made a math error and cut nearly twice as many as I needed!
As I sewed, I was amazed to see a secondary pattern of random large plain triangles appear. This quilt was starting to grow on me. To make it a more useful size, I needed to make it longer, so I added another row of plain squares to the top and bottom. A bit of sashing and presto , Renaissance was born. I put it on the frame to quilt it and it came together rather quickly. If you don't count picking out two rows of quilting because I didn't like my thread colour choice. Ah well, if you're a sewist, then you're an unsewist too.
I had fun quilting this with alternating blocks of orange peel and curvy flowers. All in all, I learned to not give up on a fabric that I don't fall in love with immediately. And I learned that it's OK to stretch your colour palate.
I donated "Renaissance" to my son's school bazaar. I'm sure it will find a loving home.









5 comments:

Nat Palaskas said...

A lovely quilt for the festival. I love the colour and the pattern you have chosen - great quilt - Hugs Nat

Rachaeldaisy said...

What a great quilt. And some great lessons too.I'm sure it'll go to someone who loves it!

Sandra said...

What a lovely cozy quilt, the secondary design of large triangles is cool. I'm sure it will be loved.
Come see my 1890 antique schoolhouse quilt and
black/white/pink scrappy miniature

Chris said...

One of those cases of lemons turning into lemonade! It is a wonderful quilt!

Quiltbenaco said...

E' davvero bello!
Ciao Domenica