Monday 20 May 2013

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Rainbow Skittle Quilt

Spring Blogger's Quilt Festival - AmysCreativeSide.com
Find out more here!!

So I only discovered the Blogger's Quilt Festival last week from Gemma's post over on Pretty Bobbins. It looks like a really fun event and one I want to dip my toes in, so I can learn more about it. I do know that it's on twice a year to coincide with the Quilt Markets and run excellently by Amy at Amy's Creative Side.

I'm entering two of my favourite quilts so far. This post is about Paul's Rainbow Skittle Quilt, which was first posted about here! When looking back on that post I realised that I didn't have very good photos of it all finished. It was packed up to go back to America with Paul too quickly for that, plus it's really dark and wet in Ireland in January. So we went out and took some more this morning!!



A year ago, now, I bought a jelly roll of Moda Marbles in citrus. The colours in there are exactly the kind Paul absolutely loves. But then making it into a quilt dropped down to the bottom of my priorities. Once we decided to get married around Christmas, I knew it would be the perfect wedding gift for Paul. So I got my ass in gear and bought a white jelly roll, and began sewing the colours and white into pairs.



Once I had the big long strips made, I cut them all into squares. Then by rotating each square, which were half white and half a colour, I laid out a design (not before agonising through several). All it took then was lots of aligning seams and pinning and sewing. But once I got a few squares together the happiness of the colours really carried me through the repetitiveness!




The hardest part was keeping it secret from Paul and off the blog. I made an embroidered label for the back, from a picture drawn by Britta who has a blog about her awesome art here. But I just realised that I haven't put mine or Paul's name or the date on the back, so I think that will be my evening handstitching this week.



Originally I wanted to quilt around each of the zig-zags with the machine, in thread the colour of the pieced zig-zag. Creating coloured outlines of zig-zags on the back of the quilt. However, about 10 minutes after starting that (and two weeks sourcing all the right coloured threads) I knew it was not going to work on my home machine the way I imagined. So instead I moved to my embroidery threads and hand-tied the quilt. One knot for ever corner of each zig-zag! All in matching colours.



This was the 4th quilt I made, and the first I planned out by myself instead of using a pattern. I found using Adobe Illustrator really useful for auditioning layouts.

Quilt Measurements: 62¼" x 61½"
Special Techniques: Hand-tying and embroidered label.
Quilted by: Me!
Materials: Moda Marbles in Citrus jelly roll, Moda Bella White jelly roll, Michael Miller Rainbow Stripe for binding, white sheet for backing, Warm and Natural batting, and assorted embroidery threads.

Entered into the ROYGBIV category.

Thank you so much for coming to visit me! I hope you're enjoying the blogger's quilt festival as much as I am :)

15 comments:

  1. So fun and cheerful! Skittles is a great name for it.

    And speaking of names, I teach as a substitute and shocked a Gr9 named Aoife when I was the first teacher to ever pronounce her name right... It's not a common name in Canada but I know a few Siobhans as well. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a great quilt - I think the hand-tying was a great idea. And that embroidery on the back is adorable!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Super cute!! I love the robots on the back!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Good to hear about your method for piecing this. I'm not sure how I'd approach it, but wouldn't have thought of rotating pairs- Great!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Lovely bright colours against the white!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Your Skittles quilt is fabulous! I love rainbows and chevrons, so combining the two is PERFECTION. Love it!

    ReplyDelete
  7. This is a great quilt and love the picture in front of the wall. The colours really shine out :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. I love how colourful this one is! It is such a happy quilt! The robot embroidered label is too much fun - made me smile the second I saw it.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Such a beautiful quilt! Love the label!

    ReplyDelete
  10. I love this quilt and the name is absolutely perfect! Yay for you for entering the Festival!!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Oh I love this! I love the tied look on the back with all the colors...I used to tie all my quilts, just so I could finish them :)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Love this quilt! It is so very fun and I am sure he loved it when he received it (I know I would!). Your embroidered tag on the back is awesome.

    ReplyDelete
  13. So bright and cheery! Love that cute label too.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I love rainbow quilts and yours is amazing, so eye catching, and all that hand tieing! Good luck at the festival :-)

    ReplyDelete

Thank you so much for commenting! I love hearing your honest thoughts and opinions on whatever I've been harping on about :)

I email replies as soon as I get the chance.