Blogger's Quilt Festival

I had a hard time deciding on the quilt for this Festival. I've got a couple favourites -- quilts I'm particularly proud of, or that have a special story attached to them.

Starry Evolution

I chose Starry Evolution because it's all mine - pattern, fabrics, quilting. Even though this palette isn't really "me" anymore - this quilt was completed in 2005 - it still makes me happy to look at it. I was inspired by quilts in Alex Anderson's Simply Stars book and decided to make a star sampler using the fabric in the corners as a focus and going from there. The "evolution" in the title refers to the fact that this quilt was pieced over a period of about 4 years, beginning when I was an absolute quilting rookie. My skills developed as the quilt came together and the quality of the piecing reflects that.

The quilt is entirely hand-quilted, and there's a bit of a funny story there. As incentive to get the quilt done, I entered it in my guild's biannual quilt show, and when I registered the quilt, I ambitiously indicated that it would be hand-quilted. As you do when you're the President of the Last Minute Club, I left the quilting quite late and very quickly realized it was going to take a really. long. time. Much longer, in fact, that I had spare time between the Moment of Realization and the submission deadline.

So I did what any self-respecting quilter would do: I used a week of holidays and spent the entire week preceding the deadline hand quilting that sucker. And after all that, the intricate Celtic symbol I chose for the border got completely lost in the fabric. You can barely, barely see it. Aaarrggh. But the quilting is quite good if I do say so myself.

  Lousy closeup of motif in border.

This quilting isn't bad!

I haven't dared hand-quilt anything since, but that still makes me smile when I look at this quilt, which lives on the wall in our living space.

Thanks, Amy, for hosting this Festival. It's my first one and I am so very happy to participate!