Blogger’s Quilt Festival – Out of Square

Here’s my entry for the 3rd Blogger’s Quilt Festival, brainchild of the ever awesome Amy of Amy’s Creative Side. What I love about the focus of this festival is the emphasis on what the story behind the quilt – such a neat way to encourage folks of all skills to join in, because there are no “quilt police” whipping out their white gloves to scrutinize if your bobbin thread ever got pulled to the front! (Here are my other entries from festivals past.)

This quilt was the 1st one I designed totally by myself. I had fallen in love with fabric dyeing, but I wasn’t able to do lots of dyeing as I didn’t have a dedicated dye area. The beginning of my journey towards becoming an art quilter started with this quilt – with the ability to (mostly theoretically at this point) dye my own fabric, I was beginning to want to have total control over every aspect of the design. In love with Amish quilts at the time (well, I still love them…) I took the traditional square within a square pattern and turned it on it’s side. I’m pretty sure I had just learned how to paper piece, which was a great help with all those little points. After I made the 9 blocks, they sat on my design wall for a LONG time, I was waiting for the perfect way to set them. When I finally figured out how I wanted to set them, it took awhile for me to get up the nerve to to it, what with the set in corners and all. Plus, I had to learn how to dye black!

After the top was done, I was so happy with it I was scared to quilt it for fear I would mess it up, so it languished for years. In the meantime, I learned how to free motion quilt from Melody Johnson and then practiced, and practiced. With a move to a house with a basement laundry, I also got to do a lot more dyeing. So much so, that at some point, those fabrics in the quilt didn’t look so fabulous to me anymore. So, combined with my increased skills in free motion machine quilting, it was much easier to layer up the quilt and put it under my Bernina!

As with everything I quilt nowadays, I do very little marking on the top – I MAY have drawn a curved line for the backbone of the 4 feathers in the gray triangles, but that’s about it. Geesh, I wish I’d been blogging years ago, all these details wouldn’t so fuzzy!

What this quilt represents to me is my growth as an artist. It’s proudly displayed in my living room, juxtaposed with another large quilt that represents another huge leap for me artistically, Lollipop Flowers.