Purpel Haze is at QuiltCon!

I am so excited to have another quilt in this most prestigious show that is QuiltCon that's happening right now. I am unfortunately not in Nashville this year, but that gives me the opportunity to finally show proper photos of Purple Haze including the back, which I also like very much:

So when you're at QuiltCon make sure you ask those lovely ladies with the white gloves to turn Purple Haze around for you!

I really like this fresh colour combination and that Aurifil thread in light lilac and 50wt was just the perfect choice.

So here it is again in all it's beauty. This quilt has challenged me in so may ways, there are so many reasons I am extremely proud that hopefully a lot of quilters get to see it in real life.

There are so many interesting details in this quilt, that truly makes me want to explore curves further.

You can read about the blocking progress here, and the initial post where I was taking part in the Pantone Quilt Challenge 2018 with the quilt top only and won 1st prize of the international entries here. 

And here is Purple Haze hanging at QuiltCon in Nashville. 

Such a pity I wasn't there myself. But I'm going to QuiltCon in 2019, that's for sure!

A long overdue baby quilt

What a little snow can do to motivate you to get a quilt finished. And I only consider a quilt to be finished if I took proper photos and wrote a blog post about it.

This baby quilt for a friend's son is long overdue. Baby boy was born October 2017, yes 2017, he's already over a year old! That's how long it took me to finish it.

And I also know why it took me so long. I wanted this cute animal print fabric as a center of an improv log cabin block. I cut this fabric into wonky squares and added the mostly solid strips around to create the log cabin blocks. But I wasn't really choosing, I added them randomly. And random is not improv. I don't even think I put the blocks on my design wall. I was so sure of myself that this will work - somehow... Arrogance that is!

Half way through piecing the blocks I was aware of what I'm actually doing and was more intentional. I also only like the blocks because I squared them up, my initial goal was to leave them wonky. I added white sashing and that really worked well.

I was very careful with the design of the back then. I used left overs from the front, divided the quilt roughly into thirds and added this horizontal off centre line. I almost like the back better than the front.

I quilted free motion interlocking rectangles which work really well with the different sized blocks and used white thread. I also added white binding, which gives the quilt a nice frame.

This little quilt is 38 x 53" (96 x 135 cm) big but was a huge learning curve for me. It reminded me of my high performance rowing days where just once I was so sure of myself and so self-confident that I underestimated an opponent in a race. I still won though, but it took a lot of effort and it was a very tight race that could have gone seriously wrong.

I was reminded of Sheri Lynn Wood once again, telling us in a QuiltCon lecture that 'Improv is not random, improv is all about choice'. And there is a huge difference. It's almost a pity that I have to gift this quilt, because I'd like to hang it in my sewing studio to remind myself of exactly that.

In rowing that underestimating part never happened to me again and I hope the same for my quilting journey.

I took the quilt out in this beautiful snow we suddenly have here. I've always wanted to take photos of a quilt in the snow, so I take that as a good omen.