Garden Maze Quilt - Bloggers Quilt Festival

I am sharing with you today a very special quilt that I created which was inspired from a picture of a wall in a magazine.  This quilt has many hours of work into it and I am excited to share it with you.

This quilt is called Garden Maze.  The green in it makes me think of a hedge maze.  Green is not usually my color that I go to but when I decided to see if I could make this quilt it was the largest piece of fabric in my stash, 3 yards.  It is a pretty green batik with leaves.  The white is Kona white.

When I started the quilt I made some squares of strips and quickly realized that it wasn't going to work how I planned.  The lines were not lining up and causing me a lot of stress.  I was able to, after much stress, cutting, adding, mumbling, and frustration, figure out how to make it all work.

I had the top finally completed in July and let it sit for a bit while I decided how to quilt it.  

In August I pulled it out again and set to quilting it.  I did a squiggle stitch in all of the white lines of the quilt.  This is quilted on a home sewing machine, a Singer.

I just popped in a couple audio books and went to town.  This took just over 14 hours to quilt it.  It was a bit tough to wrestle it through the machine, but thanks to spray basting it there was no shifting of fabrics as I shoved it through.  (Seriously, shoved!)

I am in love with this quilting ans so proud of how even the stitching is.  

I know, lots of pictures, but I can't help it.  

Following all the lines was not easy.

I backed it in a solid white and just love how the quilting really pops.  The design really stands out.  

Love all the quilting!

I bound it in a batik green which frames both the front and back so well.

Garden Maze 

63" x 64"

Batik green and Kona white

Pellon 100% cotton batting

Coats and Clark machine quilting thread

So in love with this quilt! 

I am entering this quilt in to Bloggers Quilt Festival in the Large Quilt Category.  I hemmed and hawed over where to place it.  I knew, though, that I had to enter it.  I am super proud of this quilt.  

Head over to Amy's Creative Side and check out all of the amazing quilts in the festival.  

Batik Strip Quilt

So it has been a while since I updated my blog and I have been crazy busy sewing away.  So over the next couple of weeks I plan on posting my projects and sharing the number of finishes.  Also talking about my grand plan for my quilting.  

To start my project sharing I think I will start with a quilt that I began in the beginning of the summer.  I started to become overwhelmed with my ridiculous amount of scrap stash so I figured this supper to join in the Purge quilting that was going along.  I began with my batik scraps.  I pulled out a bunch of 2.5" strips that were left over from projects, collected from my LQS scrap bin, and from scraps from the AQS show.  I am an equal opportunity scrap saver, anything over 2.5" square was used in this quilt.

I randomly started piecing the strips together into a long strip as if I were creating a jelly roll quilt.  I sewed the strips together with straight seams, but you will notice there are angle joins, too.  Those were already pieced and just added in as scraps.  It was an anything goes quilt.

As it was coming together, I was not so sure about the mix of colors since it ranged so much, but figured why not give it a chance. I am so glad that I kept going with it.  I kept sewing the pieces together then adding those together, and so on until I had a really long piece sewn together.  I have no idea how long it was, I just figured long enough.  I then used the jelly roll race technique and sewed the strip to itself.  That continued until I had a squarish quilt top.

For the back I chose a light purple batik I had gotten from an estate sale and added in a strip of dark purple batik I had sitting around that was a gift from a friend, Jane.

Once I had it all sewn and basted, I decided on a loopy figure eight for the quilting.  This was the last quilt I was completly able to quilt on my Simplicity machine.  The next quilt I worked on it broke, so this quilt has a special place in my heart.

The quilt is hand bound with a scrappy batik binding.  So many colors are in this quilt.  I can probably make at least another 2 tops like this and not put a dent in the batik scrap stash.

Batik Strip Quilt
Cotton fabrics
Pellon 100% cotton batting
48" x 48"