Scrappy Mountains - A Finished Quilt

Here's my first finish of 2016!

It's technically a January finish.  I've put the last stitch on this baby last Sunday on my flight back from Montreal, as evidenced below...

... but a dark and rainy week made it impossible to take decent pictures.  Snow + Sun today made for a good photo shoot, though the wind was a challenge.

This quilt has been one year in the making.  Inspired by the bee blocks  requested by my Canadians Quilt Bee 2015 bee mate Shena of Apple Pie Patchwork, I set out to make 100 blocks (they are made in sets of 2). There are different tutorials for that block.  I used Shena's tutorial found here.

My MMQG pals helped me decide how to quilt it and provided encouragement as I started quilting during a Sew-in...  Man, that thing was a beast to quilt!

I went with outline quilting of the bright mountains and meandering in the low volume reversed mountains, all with a light beige Aurifil thread.

For the binding, I requested opinions in an earlier post.  Lorna, of Sew Fresh Quilt, was the only  commenter who broke from rank and did not pick one of the choices I gave.  Instead, she suggested a low volume binding, which I thought was brilliant.  Of course, I had to put my own little twist on it, so I included a small red section.  Can you spot it?

The backing is a giant scrappy mountain to which I added a few extra strips.  I used the same method as for the blocks - which was a mistake.  Because of the large size, it was awkward to work as a single block.  It would have been less time consuming to just use strips and sew them at an angle.  Regardless, the result is the same, and kind of fun.

I have yet to decide where this quilt is going to live.  I love it so part of me wants to keep it, but I am wondering if I should save it for a gift.  I have a couple quilt-worthy people I can think of.  So while I ponder this question, here are a few more pictures:

Quilt roll before wash...

...and quilt roll after wash.

Oh, the post-wash texture...

And one last shot, the usual hammock picture:

I seem to have found my quilty groove again... so on that note, I am off to quilt some more!

Throwback Thursday - Quilt for my Niece

It's Throwback Thursday again!  Not sure what that is all about? Then go check out my friend Jenn's blog - A Quarter Inch from the Edge.

I don't know how that happened, I mean, I am so young and so is my sister, but somehow, I have a nice who graduated from high school... 6 years ago!

She had been visiting a few months before and when I took her to the fabric store, I had taken mental note of her favourite fabric:

I cannot tell you the designer, the manufacturer or the name of the pattern - I didn't care too much about these things in my pre-blogging days (and to a certain extent I still don't).  But not only is this one of my favourite fabrics ever, I have also seen it over an over again in decoration magazines and other similar places.

Anyhoo, In anticipation of making a quilt for my niece, I went back to the store and bought whatever was left on the bolt.  That was the easy part.  The tough part was to find matching fabric.  Not as in "perfectly matching" but something that "played well" with it.  It proved extremely challenging.   Don't believe me?  I dare you to go in your stash and find fabric that plays well with this large brown floral.  Go ahead.  I'm waiting!

After a long search about 4 different stores (back in the day, before I ever considered online purchases) I found sufficient matching fabrics.  Can you believe none of these are not from the same line or even the same manufacturer?  All that trouble... and when I presented the quilt to my niece, she had absolutely no recollection whatsoever of having laid eyes on the fabric.  Oh well.

Making the quilt was actually easy.  The pattern is from a Kaffe Fassett book although I am not sure if I followed the pattern or simply used the idea of making squares of three different sizes (3", 6" and 9").

Oddly enough, I had a large chunk of my focus fabric remaining (one would think I should have used it in the front since it's the only fabric I truly love in this quilt), so the back went together quickly...

A little machine embroidered label...

Quilting is a bit rudimentary...  this was probably my second or third time free motion quilting.  I like to think I've come a long way.

On a trip to Montreal last month, I had a chance to take the quilt for a photo shoot.    My nephew graciously agreed to be a quilt holder...  Or perhaps he is just hoping he'll get a quilt when he graduates too...

Again, I think I am way to young to have a nephew that tall, but I have to say he came in pretty handy! 

Thanks, Jenn, for providing the encouragement to revisit our quilts from the past!

***

On a completely unrelated note, a photo shoot is not the only thing I've been up to on my recent trip to Montreal.  On my last day,  I was able to catch this exhibition...

I was thrilled to meet the two Montreal MQG founders Cinzia Allocca (Deux Petites Souris) and Josée Carrier (Charming Needle).  Always nice to meet quilty celebrities in person!  The only bad thing is that I was literally on my way to the airport (and accompanied by a nine year old who does not dig modern quilt exhibitions) so there was not a lot of time for chit chat.


My pictures of the exhibition are not that great, so I invite you to go check out the Montreal MQG blog, or member Shannon Fraser`s blog for an excellent recap.  Always inspiring to see other people's work!

On that note, time to stop blogging and go sewing!  Cheers!