Bloggers' Quilt Festival Spring 2012

Even if I'm new to this blogging business, I decided I could plunge in right away and submit one of my few quilts to Amy's Bloggers' Quilt Festival. 

So here we go. THE CHOSEN ONE is my first quilt ever. I made it last year for my eldest son (who was 3 years old then). I didn't know what chain-piecing was, I had rarely read about quilting and had just quilted a fabric box and some mug rugs before I started this quilt. I had sewn some garments for my children, mastered curved seams for other small projects but sewing the tiny 2,5" squares together was quite new and diffucult to me.

I pulled all fabrics from my (small) stash, and just went ahead. I was inspired by this moda bake shop tutorial but did't want to include my boy's name (it has 10 letters - way too long for the small baby quilt :o) So instead I appliqued the word "CARS" - as two of the fabrics featured cars.

The quilting is a combination of an inline-outline quilting along the rows and columns and in the bigger blocks I stitched the silhouette of a truck (no free motion quilting, oh no, I used my ordinary presser foot and turned and turned and turned the quilt...). 

The center piece of fabric reminded me of road markings and it features some truck silhouettes as well.

It took quite some time to finish the piecing, basting and quilting and by then, I realized that the quilt would never be big enough to cover my son. So I changed ideas and attached additional triangles in the upper corners of the backing to be able to use it as a wall hanging. 

I used a plain green binding and used a decorative stitch of my sewing machine.

 

When I was done, I was so happy with it, I even hung it up in our living room for a few weeks so that I could look at it all the time. Now it is hanging in my son's bedroom (next to dinosaurs and dragons. Oh well :o))


Happy sewing!
Christine