Hand Me Downs - Blogger's Quilt Festival

I'm entering Hand Me Downs as my second entry in this spring's Blogger's Quilt Festival.  It was really difficult to choose a category - small?  scrappy?  original design?  I ended up picking home machine quilted.

The story of this quilt really begins with a pair of quilts named Something Old, Something New and Something Borrowed, Something (Aqua) Blue that I made as a wedding gift (you can read about them here).  When I finished them, I still had a lot of the donated dress material left over.  I created this quilt for the bride's mother.  I saw a tile pattern (which I would reference if I could ever find it again!) on the internet.  The blocks were simply pieced from squares and rectangles, which I thought would work well with the scrap material I had left.

I had done a bit of stipple quilting on some mug rugs and a few items for myself, with limited success (the bobbin side was a mess).  The Somethings were my first foray into freemotion quilting on a real (OMG, I'm going to gift this to someone) project.  Hand Me Downs, was my first real quilt that I did nothing but freemotion, with patterns I had only practiced once or twice.  Oh, I was nervous when I took the plunge.

The quilt was primarily pieced from five different fabrics (and accented with few pieces of velvet).  I assigned a quilting pattern to each fabric; then quilted from piece to piece, according to its pattern.  I nearly cornered myself once or twice, but managed to quilt the whole thing as one continuous line.  Fun!  I had a hard time photographing the front of the quilt (the colors aren't right and I couldn't capture the texture).  The back was much easier to photograph.  I almost hated to put on the hanging sleeve - I liked the back as much as the front!

Some sunshine really brings out the quilting

It was a surprise gift for my aunt and I managed to keep it a secret until it arrived at her house.  She was thrilled to receive it!  I hope to see it on display the next time I visit her.




Blogger's Quilt Festival Stats
Quilt Measurement:  24" x 24"
Technique:  machine pieced and quilted
Category:  Home Machine Quilted

Be sure to check out all of the inspiring quilts submitted for the Blogger's Quilt Festival!