Today Is The Day!

Today is the day that the Quiltmaker blog Quilty Pleasures will be showing the quilt I made from the pattern and fabrics they sent me.
This has been a great opportunity to see a little bit of the background process of how Quiltmaker puts things like this together.  I must say that Diane Harris of Quiltmaker has been great at informing all of us along the way of what was expected and when.  She also answered (sometimes in a creative way) all of the questions I had about the Back To School Quilt group.  I say creative way because I asked her how many people applied for things like this opportunity to sew a quilt. Her answer was somewhere between several dozen and several hundred.  And that our group fell somewhere in between. That answer was good enough for me.  Someone, joking I'm sure, said that there were probably only eight that applied.  Which was good because there were only eight new fabrics they wanted to showcase.  Well that got me wondering about how many do apply and the reason I asked Diane the question.

I've asked for permission to use some of Quiltmaker's photos but until I get that permission mine will have to do.  Okay, I got permission before I posted so I'll use both.

 Quiltmaker Photo used with permission.

"Back To School Quilt"

Here is a picture of my quilt. If you biggie size it you will see that all of the Hoffman fabrics have silver threads running through them.  I must say that this fabric was very nice to work with.  It has a great weight and feel.  I always wash all of my fabric before it goes in my sewing room and this fabric was no exception. That was one of the first questions I had for Diane.  Was it okay if I pre-washed it?  Permission was given and I washed it the night I got it. 

I had the fabric shipped to my office in Topeka.  It was so great to open it and find fabric that was something I liked.  This box sat next to my desk all day.  I just couldn't quit staring at it.  And I couldn't wait to play with it.

Closer View

I will say that since this was fabric I couldn't run to town and replace I was just a little afraid to start cutting it.  So I started this project by making a sample out of my fabrics.  I'll show a picture of it later this week.  I'm glad I did it that way.  This was a very simple quilt to cut out and make.  But by making the sample first it gave me the confidence to jump right in. This pattern would make a great quilt if you need to have a quilt finished in a hurry.

As I've said before on here the actual quilting was concerning me the most.  Quiltmaker actually expected us to follow their quilting design. So I started practicing first on paper then on a quilt sandwich and on to the actual quilt.

Quilting the leaf areas.

Chalked and ready for the tear drop quilting.

I found that when I drew a line through the 2" x 6" sections that needed the tear drop quilting it really helped me see where my quilting needed to meet in the middle.  I will say that as I was quilting this part the word marble kept going through my mind.  I'm sure that's why mine are rounder then they are long as shown on the pattern.  But it turned out great and now I'm sure I'll use that quilting pattern again. So this definitely was a positive learning experience for me.

That's all I have for now.  But check back.  After my post "goes live" on Quilty Pleasures I may add some more of their pictures or just write another post all together.

Will you be the next sample quilter?

Julie