Bloggers Quilt Festival- Spring 2011

 

A great big thank you to Amy from Amy's Creative Side for hosting the Bloggers Quilt Festival this week and to all the fabulous sponsors who have joined in to make this such a spectacular event.

As usual I decided to enter this particular quilt with only days left to finish it. It doesn't matter what time frame I have to work with, I always leave it to the very last minute. Not good for stress levels, but it's a finish.

Here is Summer In Paris.

This quilt developed from an idea after seeing the fabric below, Paris Map by Yoko Okomato.

Photo from Fabricworm

I wanted to make a quilt that captured memories of Paris and the lovely gardens throughout the city.  I found some beautiful co-ordinating fabrics, including Larkspur by Alexander Henry, which took my breath away with the soft colours and  luscious designs. One of my favourite parts of making a quilt is playing with the fabric and "auditioning" fabrics that work well together both in colour and design/style.

My original idea was based on a Kaffe Fassett pattern, the fabrics dominate the design, and are cut into larger pieces where they can be seen at their best. 

I liked the central square, but I thought the pattern was a little too regimented. I then found the Modern Rose Garden pattern at Carolina Patchworks.

This lacked the central square but it was a much more random layout.  From these two ideas that weren't quite right, I decided to develop my own pattern. The tricky part was working out the math to make blocks that would all fit together nicely but be random in size and placement.  It was ideal to show off these beautiful fabrics, including Joel Dewberry Modern Meadow, It's a Hoot by Momo, Parisville, and some Kona solids.  There was a bit of fussy cutting involved too.

Despite worrying whether it was going to look great when finished, (I always worry that what is fabulous in my head doesn't look at all nice at the end), I was very pleased with the final result.

My intention was to quilt it myself, but when the top was finally completed, I had absolutely no idea how I was actually going to quilt it. I hadn't given the quilting any thought at all during the whole process. After asking for suggestions and receiving some fabulous responses and ideas, I chickened out and sent it to Fiona my local long arm quilter. I'm so very glad I did as the quilting is fabulous. Part of the quilting design echoes the swirls in the fabric used for the sashing and also the Patty Young, Zen Garden.

I used Kona Lupine for the binding, the first time I have used a solid for binding. The backing is from Ikea.

                               

I'm thrilled with this quilt, and I'm going to use the same pattern to make a quilt in each of the four seasons.

Here's a sneak peek of the fabric I'm collecting for the autumn/fall quilt, Autumn In Paris.

Thank you for stopping by and taking the time to visit.  There are so many beautiful quilts to see at the Quilt Festival, I can't wait to have a look at them all this week.