Blogger's Quilt Festival!

This is my first year participating in Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival, and boy, am I excited!!




This is Something Blue, which was finished just after Christmas, 2009.

(Why yes, that is my messy office. Thanks for noticing! :P )

A dear friend of mine's daughter was getting married to her high school sweetheart on January 2, 2010. I've known the family for about 5 years, and when I found out that the couple was engaged, I started to think about a quilt. Because really, in my opinion, every bride should get a quilt for a wedding gift. And then when I found out they were going to move to NC from CT right after the wedding, I thought harder. The couple was young (just 20), moving in to live together for the first time. I knew that their favorite colors were blue and green, that he was not a guy who would tolerate a whole lot of floweriness in his home, and that she had quite a modern style.

Enter the stacked coin quilt.

This is one of my favorite quilts for a variety of reasons. I love the design, and can totally see myself making one like it in the future, this time to keep. I essentially looked at a bunch of photos of coin quilts, then sat down and drew it out on some scratch paper, gave measurements for the dimensions, and went to town. Honestly, I'm finding I'm mostly incapable of following a pattern to the letter, so most of the time, I just work off of what I like and move on from there.

The fabrics are some of my favorites: KJR by Denyse Schmidt, dots from Kaffe Fasset and Amy Butler, Lizzy House, Joel Dewberry, Jennifer Paganelli... I chose to sash the long strips with cream instead of white, and I loved the result.



For the quilting, I chose straight lines in the solid stripes, at varied widths. And for the stacked coins, I chose to do a diamond pattern, giving a sort of argyle feel. I LOVE the way it turned out--it was a snap decision that I have never regretted. It gave some added interest without making more work--it actually went quite quickly, and the whole thing was quilted in a weekend. (For me, that's mad fast!) It's also the largest quilt I've machine quilted on my little Janome--48" x 66" after washing and drying. Might not seem so big to some, but it was a good challenge for me! It also gave me an idea of my limitations--I don't think I'll be quilting anything bigger than a twin on my home machine!

Thank you so much for stopping by! Can't wait to visit you all and see your gorgeous quilts!