Blogger's Quilt Festival: Spring Break

The Blogger's Quilt Festival opened on ?Friday?  I think....?  This is no reflection on the Blogger's Quilt Festival; I have been very out of it for a month now (nothing to do with quilting, just in case you thought I had fabric induced dementia or something). 

This go round the festival is broken down into categories, which I guess I understand.  There is no question that one big list of links could be overwhelming.   Still, I think it is worth a cruise through even the categories that don't much interest me (I'm sorry art quilt makers & professional quilt quilters; if it helps I know I am a philistine).  In the end my favorite quilt is often a quilt I know I never would, never could make.

& now for my entry:

After no thought at all, I decided my quilt belonged in the bed quilt category.  Because it is on a bed.  My parent's bed, to be precise.  The bed is an old-fashioned, not often seen anymore, garden variety double bed.  & while the quilt does look like an old fashioned pattern, it isn't. 

After I cruised around the festival I realized my quilt could go in more than one category, so I also put it in home machine quilted quilts because it was, although I know I deserve no particular accolades.   My style of machine quilting is to sort of slowly push the balled up quilt around while I do what I am told looks like really lame yoga poses that all seem to involve my arms being held out straight, locked at the elbows.  I call this technique "free motion with walking foot".  The result is wavy irregular lines that sometimes look more like... ehrmmmm... stylized lady parts than I ever Ever EVER intended. 

Once this was pointed out to me (yes, it had to be pointed out), I started quilting in a more or less diagonal pattern, limiting the swoops & swirls & that was fine.  Until SOMEONE asked why I was not doing anymore yoni quilting (her words, not mine) & I thought "oh screw it, yoni quilting it is" & have started doing it again. 


With almost no changes (one change, which I will go into in a bit & maybe another), it is the Spring Break quilt pattern from Atkinson Designs' pattern book Spring Cleaning. 

Spring Break is another one of those quilt tops I made in abundance.  Off the top of my head I can think of five quilts I made from this pattern, soup to nuts, on purpose.  I also once taught a (very poorly attended) workshop using this quilt as a jumping off point, so I guess I could say I was in on those as well.  As it is what could be described as "cutting intensive" & so I have also cut up scraps for it & then handed them off as well as received fabric cut by others... 

In short, I have had a hand in at least a dozen versions of this quilt.  But this one is the first one I made all by myself, cutting to piecing to basting to quilting.  I honestly cannot remember if I bound it.  I certainly MADE the binding but I might have sent it off for mom to bind.  Because I do that.  Also, I think it may have been a Mother's Day gift that showed up MONTHS late.  Which also sounds like me.

I tried to take a picture of just one block so you could see what makes it so cutting intensive, but alas the fabrics I choose (with the idea they would match the bedroom of the recipients, which I think it does) are so soft & blurry you cannot really see the contrast.  In fact, when I blew up the whole bed picture at the top and below, I realized it looks like there are dirty pillow cases on the bed!  There are not.  It is just that what it took to bring out some contrast in the quilt blocks also brought out every shadow of the ordinary wrinkles of the pillow, making it looks like a brylcreem aficionado sleeps there (he isn't).

Lastly I tried to get a whole quilt picture but it was December 24th & one of the room's residents was getting dressed for his once-a-year appearance & somehow I never made it back in there with the camera.

This is almost the only angle you can almost see the one change I am quite sure I made, though.  The quilt top itself is 5x6, that is five blocks across by six blocks long for a total of thirty blocks.  I think.  Which might be a deviation from the suggested layouts, but if it is it is a small one.  Then there is a narrow border around the whole thing & finally, wide borders on the left & right sides & the bottom which do not connect, giving the whole thing a distorted T-shaped layout.  The concave corners allow the quilt top to hang snug to the mattress without getting caught up on the footboard.  This is a fairly common feature in New England quilts, but not often seen (at least not by me) anywhere else. 

& my digital quilt label:

Finished Size is approximately 69 inches wide by 73 inches long

Pieced & quilted by me on my Bernina 153

Pattern is, as stated above, Atkinson Designs Spring Break from the book Spring Cleaning

 

 

If you came here through the Block Lotto Weekend Update, I hope you will hippity hop back to the beginning of the Blogger's Quilt Festival & if you came through the quilt festival, please do pay a visit to the Block Lotto.