Blogger's Quilt Festival -- Applique : :

If you follow me regularly, you'll remember seeing this quilt a bunch this year! It was so long in the making, changing many times, but thankfully turned into a finish I'm very happy with. This is the project that taught me how to quilt, and was made extra special by it's story and recipient. I'm excited for this chance to share it in the Blogger's Quilt Festival!



I wasn't sure which category it fit best, but decided on Applique since those elements are my most favorite parts of this quilt. The idea of a Little Folks voile, yo-yo flower garden is what started this project after-all!







The rest came together piece by piece, all unplanned. My "sketch stitch" girl, the patchwork, the appliqued butterflies.







It's made up of Anna Maria Horner prints with a few Pure Element solids, is both machine quilted with variegated Aurifil and a few of the decorative stitches my Janome offers, and hand-quilted with floss. Ans, it now lives happily with my friend Jodi!





I have started a new quilt with a similar vibe that I hope to focus in on finishing after the holidays. This type of slow-moving quilt work is something I really enjoy and plan to continue to develop. Making a quilt each year that includes one of my "sketch stitch" thread drawings and favorite fabrics is one of my personal goals for each year!



 Quilt Stats

name: An Applique Art Quilt
size: lap size
fabrics: Art Gallery Pure Element solids & Anna Maria Horner fabrics
quilting: straight line & decorative on my Janome 12000, along with hand-quilting
backing: Anna Maria Horner's Coreopsis in Lime from her Loulouthi collection
binding: Anna Maria Horner's Hugs & Kisses in Wine from her Loulouthi collection

Thank you so much for stopping by today! ♥ Maureen

Indie Symmetry Quilt : :

It's the first day back to school for my kids, I can hardly believe Summer vacation is already over! I never handle these big events well so, I'm extra grateful to have saved this new quilt to share here today rather than trying to fit blogging into our busy day yesterday. I needed something exciting to blog about!



Having this big, beautiful Indie quilt finally finished is honestly the most excitement I've felt since I began quilting! It's almost a King size quilt, measuring in at 90"x104"! It's made in all Indie fabrics, a collection by Pat Bravo for Art Gallery Fabrics, in a simple symmetrical layout of both large & small, square & rectangle cuts of fabric. When I sketched out the pattern more than a year ago, I was inspired by a few quilts I had seen at my most favorite store, Anthropologie. These Indie fabrics go so well with that colorful, bohemian style!





It's on our bed now, along with my favorite Indie pillow, and a few more cozy layers of bedding that I've been collecting to go with this quilt throughout the year. A work in progress still, but I like how our room is starting to come together.





The quilt top was originally made about a year ago for Pat to use in her Indie promotional ads and video. Then just a few weeks ago I finally pieced together the largest quilt back I've ever seen and shipped both the top and back off to Sew Shabby Quilting, a professional long-arm machine quilting service I was recently introduced to. For this quilt, keeping with it's pattern of squares and rectangles, I chose their Square Dance .01, a perfect pattern match in my opinion! Melissa did such an amazing job!!



The back is finished in the Indie Afro Fusion in Dusk print and the binding is Dynasty in Saffron, my two most favorite fabrics in the collection!





Because of it's large size photographing this one was such a challenge, but we still managed a few fun shots! I'm so grateful for my husband and kids for being so awesome and careful when it came to taking these last photos!

I still have to finish up tutorials for a few of my other quilts, but I'm curious how many of you would be interested in making a quilt this size? And, if taking the time to share the pattern at some point would be a good idea? When it comes to making a quilt this big, I love the large piecing myself, and don't feel disappointed at all with the symmetrical look as opposed to making up a quilt this size block, by block. What do you think?

Wishing you all a wonderful week!  ♥  Maureen

InstaSewing Snapshots : :

Throughout this week I've been sharing little peeks on my Instagram of what I've been working on -- new fabric stashing from Stash Modern Fabric for my next Applique Art Quilt, the Butterfly Quilt I'm making for my niece Molly, and my newest quilt finish -- my Indie Symmetry Quilt! I had made this quilt top almost exactly a year ago today and sent it right off to my super talented friend Pat Bravo to use in her photos and video for her Indie Collection. That was such a dream come true collaboration for me! Indie is one of, if not my most favorite fabric collection. I sent it off to Melissa at Sew Shabby Quilting just a couple of weeks ago to work her magic, and now my Indie quilt is home, bound, and is on our bed!!



I plan to share a full Indie Quilt post with all the details, just as soon as I can, I promise! For the rest of the week and weekend it's going to be a little quiet here, besides my Fabric Friday Giveaway (it's a BIG one!), while I soak up these last several days of Summer vacation with my family! I can't believe school starts back up here on Tuesday!

Wishing you all a lovely stretch of days!! ♥  Maureen

An Applique Art Quilt : :

It feels so good to share this finished quilt today! I decided to call it my Applique Art Quilt, but was also thinking of calling it my "A" Quilt. "A" for lots & lots of Anna Maria Horner fabrics, for Art Gallery Fabric's Pure Elements, for Aurifil thread, for applique, and an "A" for the sketch stitch art piece I designed this finished quilt around. Lots of A's!! And, as it turns out my very favorite photo from my picture taking was on this pretty apple tree, perfect!



I tried my best to take photos of the whole finished quilt. A few in some of the beautiful spots we discovered on our walk the other night, along with a few others with a painted church door and an old brick chimney as my backdrop.







Right away, I could tell that this is just one of those quilts that truly shines up close and in person. It really is the details that makes this quilt for me, which I wrote about here back when I shared the finished quilt top.



A quilt that started a couple of Summers ago with a panel of handwork -- yo yo flowers made in Little Folks Voile and many little stitches!



That quilt grew around my sketch stitch girl, with lots of improv patchwork, and one large block made of neutral pure element solids appliqued with fussy cut moths & butterflies from Anna's beautiful Sinister Swarm Field Study & Clippings Loulouthi prints!  



That was finally quilted with several colors of variegated Aurifil, combined with some of the fun quilting stitches my Janome offers, as well as some simple hand quilted stitches that I really enjoyed adding!



It's backed in one large piece of Coreopsis in Lime from the Loulouthi collection. I wish I would have taken photos with a bit more of the sky here, the bright green corn field and the blue sky matched this print perfectly! It was so gorgeous to see!





I finished the quilt by binding in this Hugs & Kisses in wine print, again from the Loulouthi collection. I'm so glad I stashed some extra yardage of this particular print in each color a while back with my owl pillows in mind. It makes an awesome binding!!



I wish you could feel this picture! The Little Folks Voile and the Art Gallery fabrics make this quilt so, incredibly soft!!



This quilt is the first quilt of many quilts I hope to make in this style. I have several sketch stitch pieces & some newly stashed Hand Draw Garden just waiting to become quilts, and I'm excited to jump right into the next one! Throughout making this one I did, at times, put pressure on myself to see it finished quickly. But every single time I would get it out to work on I would end up changing directions. In the end, I learned that that's okay, it came together in perfect timing, and now I'm ready to send it off to my friend!

Last year, right around this time, I had stepped away from this blog those last several weeks of Summer to spend with my kiddos before they went off to school. I was really struggling with my health, but mostly with the changes that were in store for me with my last baby heading off to school. It was tough, that day we took them all to school was so hard for me, but was made so much easier when that afternoon an amazing quilt was delivered to me all the way from Australia, made by my sweet & thoughtful blog friend Jodi. I shared here just how wonderful that was and I promised Jodi a friendship quilt in return. A quilt to be made with nothing but Anna Maria Horner fabrics, lots & lots of love, and hope to be able to show her how much what she did meant to me.



Having this blog and all of you to share with means so much to me, thank you all for encouraging me the way you do. This is such a dream come true!!    ♥   Maureen

Quilt Stitches : :

My one BIG sewing goal for this Summer was to finish, finally, this quilt. My longest project in the making, my very first attempt at quilting, hand-quilting, yo-yo flowers, voile, and the beginnings of my sketch stitch artwork. phew. This quilt is so, very special to me, so taking my time and enjoying the process felt really important for this one!

Yesterday I sat down at my machine feeling ready to add those final quilt stitches, although I was a bit unsure of where to begin. With so many different techniques being used in this quilt, with an already happy result, I knew I wanted the quilting to be subtle, but not simple. I browsed through the stitches that my Janome offers, and I started to feel a little brave. Since the makings of this quilt has been one very long experiment from the beginning, finishing it up by trying some new quilting stitches just felt right. I used several different colors of Aurifil, some variegated, but kept my bobbin thread a color that would blend into my quilt backing fabric nicely. This morning, although it's overcast here today, I took some photos to share a close up look at some of those quilting stitches, along with some hand-quilting I added with a neutral colored floss!















What do you think?! It's impossible for me not to second guess what I've done just a little, since I've really tortured myself with this quilt from the very beginning! I am curious to know how many of you have tried out quilting with both colored thread and decorative quilt stitches? Typically I do prefer pretty dense, straight-line quilting just as I did on my last quilt, but branching out was so much fun and in the end always pays off!  Have you given these a try yet?

Now, all that's left is for me to make and add the binding, along with a new photo shoot -- I'm so excited!! 

Until then!   ♥ Maureen