Blogger’s Quilt Festival

Last fall I entered my first quilt  in the Blogger’s Quilt Festival, hosted by Amy Ellis of Amy’s Creative Side, and the experience was wonderful. I love how the modern crafting movement has used the internet to create a warm and welcoming community, and I’m reminded each day how glad I am to be a part of it. If you are visiting for the first time from Amy’s blog, welcome! I hope you’ll have a look around and tell me what you think!

My entry for this Festival’s Appliqué category is Shoal, a quilt I made for my youngest son, Simon. Simon loves sharks and the color blue, so both feature in abundance in this quilt. It’s actually a companion to his older brother’s quilt, Apiary–when the two of them got new twin-size bunkbeds it created a excuse need to make them new bed quilts.

My appliqué technique uses fusible web to secure the silhouettes to the background. With Shoal, I then stitched each applique down by hand and hand embroidered around each one to finish the edges. I learned to hand quilt in order to quilt Apiary with a hexagon patterns, and, since Simon’s quilt had to match, I hand quilted this one with a pattern of waves.

As with Apiary, I really indulged my love of other fabrics and fibers in this quilt–the appliques consist of cotton shirting, madras plaid, linen, and wool suiting in addition to quilting cotton.

I’m particularly happy to have found this perfect Tula Pink print for the back (and to have found enough of it, since it was out of print when I started this quilt!)

Thank you so much for stopping by-I hope you’ll visit again soon!