Bloggers' Quilt Festival

Only earlier this year did I discover The Bloggers Quilt Festival which runs twice a year. Sometimes it seems that if I follow the blogs of other quilters, every day can be a bloggers quilt festival! It's always energising to see others' work online; but this event  is a great chance to really enjoy everyone's finished work all at once. It's also a good way to discover new creative people whose style you admire.

I've posted about this quilt before, but I chose it for the festival as I think it's my favourite so far, insofar as it was me stepping outside my comfort zone and trying to capture the essence of something I never tire of looking at. It was the first time I tried to do something completely out of my own head. It's very simple, but it's encouraged me to continue to practice being creative...

Since I've been in Australia I've loved the seeming endless tones of gum tree bark on the trees in our local conservation park.

Combined with the many and varied soft eucalypt greens of the leaves, it's an inspiring colour palette.


For the process of making this quilt I took nearly a hundred photos of the aforementioned bark and then ordered over 60 colours of Kona solids (- yay for the colour card) in tones I had seen in the bark and made a simple block with strips of three or four colours each. I cut pieces of fabric a bit bigger than the finished blocks of 19.5 x27 cm (71/2 x 101/2 inches) slashed them in to three or four and recombined them. In the end I culled the blocks to consolidate the colour range to capture the palette I was after, using I think only 23 shades in the end.

I took it back to the source of its inspiration for the photos.

 I pieced a strip for the back, which is mainly Kona Coal, using scraps and inserting a couple of slivers of Kona Pomegranate to reference the gum flowers.

That tree must be very old!


I wanted the skinniest binding in the darkest brown (Espresso I think), so I cut it 2" and doubled it over and it was hard work hand-sewing it down that skinny. Resolved to do 2 1/2 " next time...

I machine quilted it in this free motion bark like pattern, which actually goes lengthways on the quilt

Stats:

Size: Throw size- 64x47" (163x120cm for you metricists)

Quilted: FMQ by me on domestic machine

Best Categories: Throw; Home Machine Quilted and Quilt Photography?

Entry Number: 58