Friday 18 May 2012

Bloggers' Quilt Festival Spring 2012

Suddenly blogland is awash with entries to the Bloggers' Quilts Festival:

As my followers will know, I'm pretty knew to both blogging and quilting, so I have no illusions about winning anything, but I am really excited to take part and welcome new people to my blog! So if that's you, welcome, I'm so pleased to see you, and I hope you will take a look around my blog and will like what you see!

Anyway, on to my entry! I really wanted to enter this quilt, which I designed myself and made for my best friend's little girl. It was the second quilt I made:
...but I only have this one (pretty rubbish) photo, and I can't take any new photos of it as its owner would not be parted from it!

So I've decided to enter my New York Beauty quilt. My followers will have seen it before, but I had so many positive comments about it *blush* that I hope they won't mind seeing it again!

I decided to take part in the New York Beauty Quiltalong because I'd never done paper piecing, I'd never done curves and I'd never done a quiltalong! (brave or crazy, you decide!)! So I made a start and this was my first block:
 It went together so easily, I decided to make 4:
So then it seemed sensible to carry on like this, making 4 blocks each week. Week 2:

 Then I started to lose steam! I think in retrospect it was too ambitious to plan to do 4 a week alongside a full-time job and my other sewing! So I kept putting off doing week 3, but eventually came up with this:
 ...and then this is week 4:
...and then I stopped. For a good few weeks. I just couldn't face the thought that there were still 6 blocks to go, 4 of each one... that's 24 squares...AHHHH!! So my beautiful blocks sat there assuming they would be relegated to UFO-dom forever. Then I saw Teresa's beautiful entry for the weekly Quilting bloggers competition and thought what a great way that would be to finish off my quilt! So I got to work, week 5's block is bottom right:

 And then when it was all quilted and bound, I took it to my mum's to take some pictures:
 For only my 5th ever quilt, I'm pretty damn proud of it!


21 comments:

  1. Quilting is very nice work :)
    Marika Hungary

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  2. What a lovely quilt ! Just love the purples !

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  3. That looks amazing! Such great shades of purple! Good luck in the festival =D

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  4. I just learned how to paper piece and New York Beauty's have been calling me! Yours are NOT helping my urges! Truly beautiful!

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  5. That is absolutely beautiful. I can't believe it's only your fifth quilt - it's amazing.

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  6. You should be proud, it's gorgeous!

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  7. It's just gorgeous, a great choice, and lovely to see the progess shots too :-)

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  8. Wow this is incredible and I can see you're not going to need any pointers for taking good photos for your tutorial!

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  9. Great quilts!

    Check out my blog if you can...

    Margaret Gunn
    www.quiltsoflove.blogspot.com

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  10. A lovely quilt. And congratulations on finishing it! Perfect entry. Love your colours too.

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  11. Such a lovely quilt - brave for your first paper piecing. I love the border as well.

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  12. Your New York Beauty quilt is a beauty. I'm glad you finished it and shared it with us. I enjoyed browsing around your blog also.

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  13. Gorgeous quilt - and it's purple! I'm glad you persevered with it. Thanks for sharing.

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  14. You should be proud - this is spectacular! I love it :)

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  15. OOOOOhhh Love the pinks and the rabbits wonderful 2nd quilt. the purple is beautiful too
    Ann

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  16. I remember this quilt from the first time you posted - it is so lovely! And I like the baby quilt as well. Thanks for linking up.

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  17. You should totally be proud. I am stunned with your work having only done a few quilts so far. I bet you are loving learning this process. Gorgeous.

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  18. They are truly NY Beauties! :) I love your quilt!

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  19. Somehow I missed your post from the quilt festival earlier this week! EEps! There were so many. :P
    Both of your quilts are so beautiful and impressive. I especially love the purple one as purple might be my favorite color to work with.

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