Blogger's Quilt Festival - Fall 2011

Updated to add some photos on 10/29.
I saw this quilt in the August/September issue of The Quilter magazine, and for some reason, it just grabbed me. I'm not normally a Halloween decorating kind of person...I kind of prefer Fall decorating because you can put it out in September and leave it out for 3 months before you have to start putting up 15 Christmas trees, assembling an army of gingerbread, and baking 47 dozen Christmas cookies, so I didn't quite understand my fascination and drive to make a quilt that I could display/use for a couple of weeks. Not to mention, I'm not really a 'panel' kind of gal.

Nonetheless, I had this unexplainably, almost rabid urge to make this quilt, so I set about finding all the necessary fabrics, and a coordinating back (we all know I'm a bit OCD when it comes to things matching...I'm just now starting to get over that need to have every fabric used come from the same line/manufacturer). I had to order from three separate shops...a valuable lesson learned....

Lesson 1: By the time you see the quilt in the magazine, the fabric has already been out for months (if not longer), so good luck wrangling it up...AND...Most online quilt shops do not carry the full line of fabric...in fact most brick and mortar shops do not carry full lines...they pick and choose from within the line and colorways, so never think that putting together a project like this will be a one-stop shop.

It didn't take long to piece this together. I was quite proud of my perfect points and alignment in the star blocks. The little cornerstones were fussy cut so that a spider appeared on each one...tedious, but necessary to the design. The problem came when I got to the backing and discovered that....horrors....I hadn't ordered enough fabric. Great. So, I pieced together border fabric, extra panels, and what I had purchased and with a little 'cut this strip off the border fabric and add it to this piece' magic, I wound up with just enough to leave an inch all around.



Lesson 2: An inch overhang on a backing is not enough to allow your quilt to be long-armed, when it occurs to you that you should send it out because you're going crazy with the October 8th wedding details and worried that this quilt won't see Halloween 2012.

Sucking it up, I decided to lock myself in the studio one weekend and machine quilt this baby on the Bernina. My current fascination is teeny, tiny stippling (thank you Sharon Schamber!), so that's what I did around the star blocks...well actually, teeny, tiny switched to just plain small after the first block when I realized how much time that was going to take, but it's all good.

 The pieced blocks were stippled around the points.

The center of the stars got a spiderweb pattern quilted in.

Not the greatest stippling, but it it is small....the area pictured above is just about 2.5". MQP have a field day.

Then I had this great idea to pull out a metallic thread (which I have NEVER quilted with) to use on the spiderwebs that I was quilting over. Thankfully, my metallic thread was Superior thread, so I never had an issue with a thread break, or tension, though it didn't seem to quilt as smoothly and evenly as I had wanted it to. Fits and starts, a bit of ripping, and it really bothered me that I only used it on the 2 blocks with spiderwebs. Even after the quilt was bound I considered ripping it out again and going over it with cotton thread, but really....it's a Halloween quilt, it's for me, it'll be out 2 weeks a year and repeat after me....."FINISHED IS WAY BETTER THAN PERFECT".

 

Not sure you can tell there's metallic thread along the web lines.

They aren't the straightest or the greatest or the most even stitches. But it was my first experience with metallic, so I'll need to practice. Maybe I'll pull it out and use it on the Christmas quilt.

Lesson 3: Test out quilting with metallic thread BEFORE you put a needle-full into your real quilt project.

In the end my quilting isn't perfect...there's some microscopic stitching going on that would resonate like fingernails on a chalkboard with the MPQ (Machine Quilting Police)--I just didn't feel like using my stitch regulator on this one, it gets in the way when stippling. I'm not thrilled with the corner blocks, though they are what the pattern called for. I did play with some other ideas, but in the end I was lazy and just said screw it, go with the pattern. But I do have a colorful, fun Halloween quilt to snuggle under in the family room for the next week or so, so I'm happy!

Thanks for looking, and be sure to check out the other quilts in the Festival. You can link to the Festival page and navigate the entries by clicking on the icon on my sidebar, or you can click the title of this blog entry. Big thanks to Amy's Creative Side for hosting this Festival twice a year. Love you Amy!

Enjoy!