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Bloggers' Quilt Festival [Neon Stained]

Hello and welcome! If you've headed over from the Blogger's Quilt Festival then it's great to see you here. I'm a brand new Mum, Mia is just 11 weeks old, and I sew to keep me sane. I've been obsessed by patchwork and quilting for the last few years - if you'd like to see some of my finishes, then there are links at the top of the page for 2012, 2013 and 2014 so far!

AmysCreativeSide.com

My second entry in this Bloggers' Quilt Festival is my Neon Stained quilt. I'm entering this in the home quilted category.
It's windy today and I was using an inexperienced quilt-holder-upper

If you are a regular reader then you will know a couple of things already about this quilt - it has been a WIP for years and I recently did an epic quilting job on it. For those of you who are new, here's the full story: In spring 2012 Sarah from Narcoleptic in a Cupboard led a quilt along for her quilt Stained. I had collected some citrus coloured fabric and this was perfect. The pink was a bit of a last minute addition. You can find all the info for the quilt on Sarah's blog.


After some epic cutting over the Easter weekend, and then a week off work spent piecing (heaven) I had a finished quilt top. I even got it basted fairly quickly. I added it to my Finish Along list. And then the next quarter and the next and the next....

I couldn't decide how to quilt it. I had two ideas: very dense straight line quilting or individual quilting patterns in each coloured block. Both had disadvantages. For the first idea I just couldn't decide on a thread colour. For the second idea my free motion quilting wasn't good enough. Since summer 2012 I have stippled a large number of quilts and did some other patterns as part of the Skill Builder Quilt Along (something else I haven't finished and that is on my Finish Along list).

For some reason I decided April this year was the month to do it and to go with option 2. I madly pinned lost of quilting ideas on my Quilting Pinterest Board and then picked out the ones I could feasibly attempt. I did a huge blog post dissecting the quilting a few weeks ago and I decided that there were some patterns I would never try again, others that I was really pleased with and lots I wanted to work on further.

I was quite pleased with the "wood grain" effect in the block bottom right
The square spiral (orange in the centre) gave a really dense finish I liked

My favourite was very dense matchstick quilting (pink block in the middle)
And I want to further develop the ideas where I've combined two patterns in the same block (green top left)
I want to try the "stringed circles" (yellow and green blocks at the bottom) again

The backing is a cotton fabric from Ikea. I quilted it with the same colour in the bobbin as the top thread so you can see the quilting (in all it's glory/gory) from the back.


I finally finished attaching the binding this afternoon! I added a corner of orange to black binding. This may be my favourite quilt ever. I love the colours and how bright it is and I love the dense quilting - this is a heavy quilt.
Fleck of orange binding in the bottom right corner
As well as linking up for the Bloggers' Quilt Festival, in a few weeks time I will also be linking this up with Katie as one of my finishes for this quarter. You can find my original Finish Along list here.

Finish Along 2014

My other entry in this Bloggers' Quilt Festival is my Thread Along quilt - you can find the post here. If you'd like to see my previous entries into the Blogger's Quilt Festival, you can follow the links below:
Bear Paws
Rhubarb and Custard
Pembrokeshire
Bubbles Baby Quilt
Farmer's Wife Quilt
Rainbow Incubator Quilt
Wilding Angels - my first quilt

Thanks for stopping by!
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Comments

One English Teacher said…
This is absolutely fabulous. In this case, I'm glad that you waited until your skills caught up with you so you felt ready to try out so many techniques. I think the wood grain is my absolute favorite out of all the ones that you showcased,but it's hard to pick just one.
17 May 2014 at 18:38
Anne / Springleaf Studios said…
Wow I'd say you have a fabulous finish and worth the waiting. The quilting is amazing and looks so interesting from the back. Well done. Congrats on the new baby too. Enjoy that precious newborn time.
17 May 2014 at 21:08
Dolly said…
That's a wonderful finish !
17 May 2014 at 21:48
Unknown said…
I love the varied designs in each section. Beautifully done!
17 May 2014 at 23:48
Marly said…
Congratulations Jennie, I'd say this one was worth waiting for. I've seen it before, but now it's finished it's better; your quilting is amazing.
18 May 2014 at 08:42
CitricSugar said…
You did a beautiful job - that quilting!
19 May 2014 at 00:24
PaintedThread said…
Fantastic. It's a beautiful quilt. I've always wanted to try a stained glass quilt.
21 May 2014 at 01:54
Lin said…
I think I have voted but was not quite sure how the vote registered! Anyway, it's a great quilt. xx
24 May 2014 at 09:26
Lonci said…
Your quilts are wonderful:))
26 May 2014 at 05:10
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