Friday, April 17, 2009

quilt festival

Amy at Park City Girl had a great idea for an online quilt festival. I love the idea, especially because I have to miss the International Quilt Show this weekend here in Chicago. I went last year and really loved it. It was incredibly inspiring to see so many beautiful quilts. I'll be out of town this weekend at a swing dance event, so I have to miss it. I was so keen that somebody enjoy it that I told my quilting friends they had to go, and bring me pictures.

All that being said, part of Amy's idea is for people to post their favorite quilt and the story behind it. That's actually really hard! But I'll pick one anyway. This is a quilt I made for my good friend Mike. We've been friends for over ten years. When he told me he was getting married to his Japanese girlfriend, I immediately thought, "I need to make something special for him." I make lots of baby quilts, but for someone to get a full-sized quilt they need to be really special. So I pored over books and fabric and finally chose "Children's Delight" from the book Quilts from the Quiltmaker's Gift. It's pretty traditional, but I wanted to make something with more modern fabrics.

A quilting friend of mine used to belong to a monthly fabric club wherein she received a package of Japanese quilting fabrics every month. She hadn't used much of it, so she let me "go shopping" in her stash. Whee! I was excited. After choosing a bunch of fabrics, I still needed a few more colors, so I went to the quilt shop and found some to round everything out. What I love about the center blocks is that they are all from the same fabric. But because the fabric is a large-scale print, every block looks different.

Once I had pieced the whole thing, I "cheated". I sent it off to be professionally quilted. There was no way I could do the awesome design that the longarm quilter did.


You can see the quilting better on the back.

It came back absolutely stunning. I gave him the quilt in June, two months before he got married. You can tell he likes it by the picture below!

26 comments:

  1. A great quilt! And I really like the binding.

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  2. Love the quilt! Are you from Chicago? Me too and tomorrow I'm headed to the IQF in Rosemont with the friend...it'll be my first time and I can't wait! Sorry you have to miss it, but swing dancing seems like a great alternative! Have fun!

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  3. Beautiful Quilt! I love Asian fabrics..

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  4. How sweet of you to use the Japanese prints. And it turned out so pretty!

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  5. I love those Japanese prints but have never had any great ideas for how to use them. This is a great use of them.

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  6. this is so lovely!! i love the quilting you did!!

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  7. What a wonderful gift.

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  8. Pictures with people wrapped in quilts always make me smile, a beautiful gift!

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  9. What a lovely gift for a special friend.

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  10. So glad that they love it!! Your quilt is beautiful and those center squares are very unique! Thanks for sharing :)

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  11. A great quilt...lovely memories behind the quilt!
    Micki

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  12. beautiful. I love the colors. This is such fun looking at all the unique and different quilts.

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  13. Yeah, he looks pretty enthusiastic about it! I don't blame him--it's great!

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  14. I love the quilt. It very nice.

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  15. What fun. I love the last photo!!!! The quilt is very nice too.

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  16. Gorgeous! I love when one fabric gets to show off like that.

    The longarmer did a fantastic job - sometimes you just have to make the $$ sacrifice for the sake of art ;o)

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  17. What a lovely idea to use Japanese fabric. It really looks beautiful.

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  18. Beautiful your quilt, i love the fabrics. Thanks for ypur visit. Hugs from Brasil.

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