Friday, May 16, 2014

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Another first for me!  I am entering my Hipster Swoon quilt in the Modern Quilts category of the Blogger's Quilt Festival, hosted by Amy's Creative Side.

This quilt was a house-warming gift for my sister and her boyfriend, who recently moved in together.  They are both political journalists in D.C.  He has a beard and wears plaid shirts.  She wears terrible, over-sized plastic-frame glasses.  They went to the White House Correspondents Dinner this year.  How cool are they??



The answer, of course, is *almost* cool enough for this quilt!

I had been wanting to make a Swoon quilt, but I wanted to pair up the traditional / sweet look of the block with some edgy fabrics that were decidedly non-traditional and non-sweet (tangy?).

I started with a bundle of Riley Blake's Geekly Chic in a pink/multi colorway.  I then purchased a few more large-scale hipster-y prints and added fabric from my stash, including a couple of vintage hand-me-down scraps from my mom.

The individual blocks are HUGE:

Micheal Miller Bicycles with Jeni Baker's Color Me Retro...


...Groovy Guitars from Michael Miller, the Boy Toys Camera fabric from Robert Kaufman (with the super-awesome Geekly pink skulls!)...


...a newsprint fabric (because they're journalists! get it??) with the Geekly glasses...


...a giant plaid from Joel Dewberry's Notting Hill collection (along with vintage pixelated airplanes from my mom's stash)...


...and so on.

I bound the quilt with a medium-scale black and white zigzag, which gives it lots of snap.


I backed it with a grey-and-white stripe queen-size sheet from a Target sheet set---one of my favorite ways to back a quilt.  Because (a) you don't have to piece it, (b) you can get a comfy cotton-poly blend that gives the quilt tons of strength and staying power, (c) they are cheap, and (d) you get a matching fitted sheet and pillow cases that you can use on the bed with your quilt!


I free-motion quilted it on my home machine (an old-school Bernina 802 sport) with a loop-the-loop motif.  This was my first attempt to free-motion a full-size quilt.  Definitely not perfect, but it holds the quilt together!


The finished quilt is about 80"x80" and now lives on their bed in D.C.  I snagged some pictures when I was visiting in March.  Fun, and not too girly, even for a guy!  I wanted my sister's boyfriend to like it too, since it was going to be in his room.



Finished quilt stats:
Quilt Size: 80" x 80"
Quilt design: Swoon, by Camille Roskelly
Fabrics for the top: Geekly Chic by Riley Blake, plus a bunch of others listed above
Binding: Riley Blake medium chevron in black and white
Backing: a sheet from Target
Batting: no idea!

Thanks for visiting!  And thank you to Amy for hosting this fun event.

10 comments:

  1. Loving your Swoon quilt, looks fabulous!!

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  2. congratulations on your beautiful quilt work

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  3. this is a wonderful i\entry into the festival. I am sure your sister loved it

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  4. Based on your description of the couple, this could not be a more perfect Swoon. Great job!

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  5. This is one of the best scrappy versions of the Swoon quilt I have seen - well done!

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  6. I love the Swoon quilt and hope to make one someday! I love all your fun fabric choices!

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  7. Dropping by from Blogger's Quilt Festival, you can't go wrong with a Swoon and that's a fab backing you've used :D

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  8. I love the fabrics you used! Beautiful swoon.

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  9. Love the fabrics and the binding really makes the finished product special!

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