Skip to main content

Blogger's Quilt Festival [City Sampler Cushion]

Whilst my first entry in the Blogger's Quilt Festival was an easy choice, the second wasn't and it came down to two quilts - the one I've picked here, and the Mix Tapes quilt I finished last week. In the end I went for my cushion because you've seen the Mix Tapes pretty recently if you're a regular reader. If you aren't a regular reader, you can find the Mix Tapes quilt here and let me know if I picked the right one! :)


So squeezing into the mini quilts category by measuring exactly 80" all the way round, is another of my favourite finishes this year and another one that we use all the time: my City Sampler cushion. The background to this project was that I've pieced the full 100 blocks of Tula Pink's City Sampler and I want to quilt it a la Angela Walters. I can dream, right? So this was a practice before I hit the real thing. It also served two other purposes: getting the colour scheme of mint green, peach and grey out of my system and learning to free motion quilt on my new Brother sewing machine.


I love Tula's blocks - they are so quick to piece, very few complex shapes or matching seams, and even though they are only 6" finished, you can really show off your favourite fabrics.


I had a blast quilting this! It's the first time I had free motion quilted in the ditch - well, occassionally I hit the ditch, mostly I just got close to the seam! It was also the first time I'd quilted feathers on a real project (top left block in the photo above), and although they aren't perfect, it's given me the confidence to keep trying!


I've learned a lot about how I want to quilt the full size sampler. Maybe by the next Blogger's Quilt Festival I'll be able to enter that as a finished quilt!

AmysCreativeSide.com

You can find my other entry into the Blogger's Quilt Festival here.

Comments

I love the cushion. The quilting looks great. I have to start learning how to do some free motion quilting! Love the colour combination with the mint, peach and the grey!
ipatchandquilt said…
Great idea to start on a pillow first before attemtping a big quilt. Lovely pillow with sweet colours! Good luck in the Blogger Quilt festival!
Esther
Cindy said…
I'm making some City blocks myself with scraps. Making a pillow is a great idea to practice the quilting. I love the softness of the colors.
MegsAnn said…
I don't usually like low-contrast pieces but this one is cute. Well done!
Anonymous said…
Hi! Jennie
I really like the dense quilting on this piece - I hope it gets plenty of interest on the Blogger's Quilt Festival. And thanks for doing a post about the Festival - I'd never heard of it before and you've inspired me to submit a quilt.
Beautiful sampler! I love the colors and the quilting is great!
Good Job! It came out very pretty!
Super sweet pillow cover!

Popular posts from this blog

365 Quilt Challenge 2016 [A finish]

I can't believe I've just typed that heading! When I made the block for January 1st 2016 I could not have imagined the journey this quilt would have taken me on. So make yourselves comfortable and grab a cup of tea, because this blog post may get lengthy! I'd seen the 365 Quilt Challenge on Facebook. I think every quilter on Facebook must have been aware of it. Loads of my friends had signed up and it kept popping up as a "Page you might like" thing. In the end, in November 2015, I joined the group, had a poke round. Decided it wasn't for me. One of the things that really put me off were the fabric requirements: you needed x amount of dark dark fabric, x amount of medium dark fabric, x amount of dark medium, medium, light medium, light, background.... I just couldn't get my head round those requirements. I'd looked at the mock ups on the wesbite and couldn't bring myself to pick a colour. I put it to the back of my mind. But I had obvious

Hidden Agenda [A Finish]

This is very possibly my favourite ever finish - I know I've said that in the past, but this one is going to be hard to beat. This time last year, I attended a day long lecture/workshop with Tula Pink and it was inspiring. Having not really loved her fabrics in the past (but loved her patterns), I suddenly saw them in a new light, linked with my 2018 new year's resolution to try more fussy cutting). Fast forward 8 months and I confess that my Tula stash has expanded quite a lot. I found some UK shops with older ranges of fabric, splurged on a few destashes and found the odd piece of her fabric already in my stash. The plan was always (and remains) to make a Smitten quilt, but I'm well aware that I have plenty of fabric to make other projects as well! So when I saw the Hidden Agenda quilt pattern by Angela Pingle, this fabric sprung instantly to mind.... and we all know I love a rainbow! And what could be better than rainbowfied Tula? I was ably assisted by my friend Ti

February Embroidery Along [A Finish]

I've really been enjoying my embroidery this year, after not doing very much last year. One of the challenges I set myself at the start of the year was to learn to colour tint my fabric before adding the embroidery - I love buying the pre-printed panels, but I'd like to do this myself as well. And the opportunity to learn this arose in February. Meg Hawkey of Crab Apple Hill Studio hosted a stitchalong to celebrate National Embroidery Month, and the first step was colour your fabric. I bought the pencils she advises,  the blending stumps, something called fabric extender and the pigma pen. And I gave it a go. My first attempt ended badly. Because the one thing I didn't buy was a new, clean paintbrush. So when I came to add the fabric extended, it went all bleary and muddy as, despite cleaning the paintbrush thoroughly, it obviously wasn't clean enough. It was unsalvageable so I started again, and I was so much happier with the results. The practice piece was, in

Labels

Show more

Archive

Show more