Blogger’s Quilt Festival - The Joy Quilt

I'm so excited to participate again in the Blogger’s Quilt Festival | Amy's Creative Side!

Blogger’s Quilt Festival Stats

entry #: 76  75!!

Finished quilt measures : 90ish" by 96ish"
Special techniques used : applique, pieced back, spiral paper piecingQuilted by : My mother and myselfBest Categories : Applique Quilt, Scrap Quilt, bed quilt, group quilt, home machine quilted, ROYGBIV (color wheel) quilt;hand quilted quilt

I had hoped to have this quilt done for the Spring festival, but it was not to be.
There is, of course, a story to this quilt. Which is why I saved it for the festival.

I have a sister. Well, I have a few sisters (and a brother). Of all my sisters, the one next up from me, was 2 years ago the only one of us still living on her own. She seemed to enjoy it, mind you. Great was our surprise when she called us in October 2 years ago saying she had met someone. Greater yet was our surprise when she called in January 2011 to say they were getting married...in June 2011! The event called for a quilt.

Several years back, when visiting the youngest sister down in North Carolina, I visited a LQS in Sanford, North Carolina, and found a fabulous selection of Kaffe Fassett material. I had never seen material like this up in the Toronto area (in Ontario, Canada). I grabbed a bunch of it, with no project in mind. When my sister announced her wedding, this was immediately the material that came to mind. She's an artist, and loves colour. I immediately called it the Joy Quilt, even though I had no idea what the design was.

I found the base design in Jane Brocket's "The Gentle Art of Quiltmaking" - Swimming Pool. Doesn't look much like it, does it...Of course there was not enough of the Kaffe Fassett material to make the quilt, and that quilt shop had closed. I wasn't comfortable ordering additional material online, in case it didn't match. Off I went to Creative Sisters, an LQS that has a great selection of batiks. And didn't they happen to have a great set of batiks that beautifully fit with my Fassett prints. Gorgeous. The DH and Toby the Wonder Dog helped me lay out the blocks.

I also wanted to get my family involved in the quilt in some way. Initially I thought I would take the quilt with me to her wedding (in Victoria B.C. - I'm in Ontario), and have everyone quilt on it with me. Crazy idea. There was no time for it! However, what I did do is send my mother (who was visiting the youngest sister in North Carolina at the time) the left over batik material (after cutting the squares) - and asked her to do something with them. And she did! She made around 35 hearts of different sizes. When I got them back from her, the next trick was to figure out what to do with them. I finally realized that they were not going on the front of the quilt. So they had to go on the back. And with all these colours, what would I do with the back, anyways? Did I need a border? How was I going to quilt all this?

The border went through many iterations of ideas. I initially had thought a small green border, with a larger border of Fassett's Blue Chrysanthemum. I asked the DH what he thought of that, AFTER i bought and cut the fabric for the border and back. Big no. So we selected a Kona Red instead, which just popped the quilt. He has such a good eye for colour. The back - well, while visiting another LQS - Greenwood Quiltery - I put my quilt top against all the Kona solids there, and the Chartreuse just yelled at me. So home it came with me.

Now what do to with all the hearts? Again, many idea. This is when I started trying to understand how I was going to quilt the darn thing, with the bright back and the colourful front. Arghh. and then my sister (the bride to be...well, by that time she was the bride already) saw my post on my peace bag, and asked - could I have those on my quilt? (those being a spiral, from Ranae Merrill's Simply Amazing Spiral Quilts and a Mariner's Compass block). She thought the Mariner's Compass block would be a representation of her husband's love for sailing, and a spiral for her art. So the back was rethought yet again. Since I had done a 3 sided spiral already, I wanted to branch out - thus the 5 sided spiral.

By this time, it was well, almost a year after the wedding. I was pretty sure I was going to have to mail it out. Wow, didn't want to trust the Joy quilt to the mail!! There were good parts of the year that I was making this that I just couldn't work on it. After naming it the Joy Quilt, I found I had to be in a certain mind/body frame in order to work on it.

The hearts found their way on to the back, with fusible interface and a lovely Amy Butler thread for the applique work. Hearts. Everywhere. and even more problematic, how to make sure the back fit the front, and no hearts were cut off. My facebook math buddies helped me out here, as they do from time to time on my projects. Unfortunately, I was not aware at that time of Elizabeth Hartmann's great free Craftsy class on Pieced Backs. That would have been useful.

Initially, it was going to back with my mother, who was to visit in August 2012 from Victoria B.C. This started to put a rush on finishing the quilt. One day, I got a call / email from eldest sister - my mother was hospitalized with an infection and needed surgery. A very long story made very short - instead of my mother coming to visit me, I went out to help her out when she got out of the hospital after two weeks. She was on an antibiotic feed for a month, with an ankle in a walking cast, and homebound for a while. The Joy Quilt took up a good part of my suitcase, with my cutting mat, sewing supplies...etc. I hastily "basted" it (good old 505) and off we went.

I thought that my mother would be able to help me finish this baby. By this time, my quilt and I were feeling pretty close to each other. When I asked my mother for help, we ended up figuring out how to do the quilting, and what to do with the hearts. I had thought we would do a primitive hand quilting around the hearts from the back, and that it would look like hearts on the front. I think we did about 10 of the hearts, and realized it just wasn't going to work. Out that came. Luckily, my mother has a janome and a walking foot, and I had brought quilting thread along (King Tut - Joseph's Coat -  a beautiful rich variegated thread). And there I went - ditchstitchng from border to border. And oh, the things I forgot about machine quilting already. And realized well after the quilt was done.  I didn't quilt through the hearts, so that gives an interesting feel on the back. The gap doesn't show on the front, unless you go looking. I also did not quilt through the pieced blocks. I left them alone.

And so it goes. We ended up quilting hearts in the borders. And some embroidery for the label work. My mother did most of the hearts while sitting out in her garden patio. Mind you, there was some serious napping going on. Good thing we only had a little deadline going on.

and on the last day of my vacation, I finished the binding. Washed it. and pictures. and gave the baby away.

 If you want to see the pieced blocks in detail, let me know and I'll add them to the blog.

This is a Queen size quilt, about 90 X 95". Trust me, I don't recall the measurements exactly. They kept changing. The blocks are 5X5", 14 blocks wide by 16 blocks long. The border is 6". I love the way that some hearts crept into border area on the back. Really. That was on purpose. This is used as a bed quilt.



I hope you enJOYed the story of the Joy Quilt!!

What joyous adventure are you having today?

Blogger’s Quilt Festival - Fast Asleep on Cloud 9

It's exciting to be participating in Amy Ellis' Blogger's Quilt Festival (BQF)! Over the last 6 months or so, I've been happily drawn into a great net of quilters who blog about their work. It's so much fun, and I've learned a lot from all of these talented craftspeople who are also talented businesspeople.

As I mention in my profile blurb, I've been a quilter for a while - very sporadic from highschool until about 2001, when I started my first quilt in about 5 years. I don't have a post on this quilt yet, so I won't tell the whole story here. Since then, I've been getting more and more focused on quilting. Until 2009 - 2010. Let's call it the year of the babies. I'm not a mother, and have no intention of being one, and am now at the point (ok, age) where people no longer ask me why not. That's not to say I don't appreciate the wee ones...although I've been known, if there's a choice between a dog or a baby, to gravitate to the dog! Anyways, in the year of the babies, after years and decades of having friends with no little human critters crawling around - they all came in one year! So I made this the year of the baby quilts, the year to dive into my hobby. I have no intention of ever getting to 30 quilts a year, or even 20...and even 10 may be stretching it - but this last year has certainly put me firmly back into my hobby with great excitement.

The quilt I've chosen for BQF is "Fast Asleep on Cloud 9", from "the little box of Baby Quilts", by Jenny Wilding Cardon at Thewildcards blog. This quilt is for Anna, who lives in Switzerland with her parents Irene and Ambros. She'll be a year old in December. For the other 3 baby quilts (see earlier blogs from this year), the mothers' chose the design and picked the fabric. Since Irene lives in Switzerland, I made the executive decision on design and fabric. I wanted something soft and dreamy for this little girl!

I thought a meandering quilt pattern would give the impression of clouds all over...and I think it worked. There are a few hearts and clouds with echo quilting thrown in too. 

My exposure to the quilt blog world quickly showed me that I could be creative with the backing - so I searched for an idea that would follow with the cloud theme, and came up with a night sky - this lovely dark blue fabric with shooting stars. The Shooting Star Square is from Jennifer Chiaverini's Sylvia's Bridal Sampler from Elm Creek Quilts. If you love quilting, and you love mysteries, the Bridal Sampler quilt is a key component of the Elm Creek Quilts mystery novels.

Quilting is an ongoing learning process for me. I challenge myself to learn something new each time...well, I don't even have to challenge myself. It kinda happens organically. So as part of the process for me - what did I learn with this quilt?

1. backing can be fun! It doesn't have to be a plain piece of material.

2. fun backing translates into considerations for quilting...those seams, and those star points. I hadn't thought about how the piecing seams of the star blocks would affect the machine quilting.

3. border quilting needs to be planned in advance of actually quilting.

4. sometimes you can be creative if you run into issues with quilting that needs to be taken out...there was a section of the border that I couldn't get righ (even though it was most basic), so after I bound it, I took the quilting out again, and replaced with a handquilted cloud and heart.

5. labels can be creative too...I had my stepdaughter letter the labels on to the shooting pieces of the stars with fabric pen - she has lovely writing.

6. ummm....my machine quilting is improving. Stitch size is not yet consistent. I learned some lessons from Leah Day's videos that helped me with moving my material around and figuring out how to approach the quilting.

7. there's likely more..but that seems like a pretty comprehensive list!

8. I know - the thread I used - a Sulky 30 wt blendable blue/gold/green variegated thread (733). I thought it would be lovely on the night sky on the back - like the Milky Way or clouds of stars...and it was! But I only bought one spool, and when it came to the border, I ran out. So therefore the pretty plain border. Lesson learned - always buy 2 spools of a great thread.

9. Next time my meandering quilting should be less tightly spaced to make for a softer quilt. (it is pretty soft - with more spacing in the quilting, it would be even softer!)

Material: Blues- stonehenge #3952 and3953 by Sunshine Cottage from Northcott; the white was an extra wide piece, no idea of source, and the yellows in the star from my stash -  all from my LQS Creative Sisters' Studio. It's machine bound, using the light blue from the front for the binding. Dimensions are apprx 60"x60.

Now that I know about all the available fabric online, you can be sure that my next fabric purchases will be from some fabulous online store!

Thanks for reading and Happy Quilting!