Blogger's Quilt Festival [Nested Churn Dash]

It's Quilt Market time - that means two things: lots of time spent on Instagram drooling over pretty fabrics and patterns (I've seen three projects so far that I'd like to be spending some time on next year...); and the Blogger's Quilt Festival.

My first entry for the Festival this year was a no-brainer. It's my favourite quilt I've made this year: my Nested Churn Dash Quilt.

This was a tutorial from Quilt Jane, that I wasn't in love with until I saw some settings of different sized blocks. As soon as I saw that, I knew I had to make one. I started at the end of June and the quilt was finished within a month!

I decided to used a long-hoarded half-yard bundle of Happy Mochi Yum Yum in the warm colour-way and supplement it with fabrics from my stash and order some Kona solids so that the end result looked quite scrappy. I also threw in a couple of greens and blues.

The part I enjoyed most about this project was the quilting. I did lots of different free motion designs in all of the "background" areas of the churn dashes. I spent a lot of time on Pinterest collecting quilting ideas and then used as many as I could. Some were more successful than others!

before washing

after washing

After washing

In the background yellow I did a cross hatch - that was a first as well, and another style of quilting I've used a lot more since! The backing wasn't big enough, so was enlarged with some left over Happy Mochi Yum Yum.

And the binding is scrappy from left over fabrics.

We use this quilt nearly every day - Mia has her toys on it on the living room floor or plays peekaboo with it. It's been through the washing machine and tumble drier countless times already and it is much loved - just how a quilt should be!

I'm entering this in the home quilted category - there will be others far better than mine, but for me this was such an achievement and gave me so much confidence to keep on at custom free motion quilting, and move away from the all-over stipple!