This is the week of the Bloggers Quilt Festival hosted by Amy Ellis of Amy's Creative Side. I have a new quilt, Echinacea Dream freshly finished just last night at 1 a.m. in the morning. This is the second year I am participating and may not have remembered that you don't need a a new quilt for the festival. Oh well, at least this was a very good impetus for me to finally finish this quilt which has been laying around my studio for the past month.
If this quilt has an air of familiarity, it's because this is the fourth quilt I've finished using my Staggered Squares and Strips pattern and also this is the second quilt made with my favorite colors of the year, steel teals and grays with a hint of coral, which were used for my Spa Spurts quilt finished earlier this year and many of the fabrics used for this quilt can be seen on the Echinacea Dream Quilt.
I just love the fabrics in this quilt, especially the Anna Marie Horner's Echinacea print in the Pretty Potent color way which I've seen my fellow blogger and mentor Susan Snooks of PatchworknPlay used for her beautiful Delilah quilt. One of the reasons why I love making Staggered Squares and Strip Quilts is that it's a great pattern to use a mix of fabrics from all different fabric lines and also because I can die-cut these strips. The Echinacea Dream Quilt follows the pattern I just used for my Smiling Sloths Quilt.
I had a hard time coming up with a name for my quilt, which is part of the fun of making a quilt, and was just calling it plain old Echinacea and added Dream after it was finished last night. Usually when I have a deadline it usually attracts quilting disasters but thankfully the stars and strips were aligned yesterday. Choosing the backing and binding were an easy decision and not the usual one or two hours going through the backing vault and stash, picking the thread, I used Silver, Juki June Bug was on her best behavior and no binding strips were lost--this quilt was a dream to finish. This does not happen too often; really it doesn't, because Quiltastropes are always waiting to happen in my studio.
Here's a close-up so you can see the wavey line quilting, charcoal gray polka dot backing and the Spa Green binding; have I mentioned how much I love these colors. This quilt measures 56" x 70"--I am amazed how much my length loses, 2", after the quilting.
I woke up this morning to an overcast sky and thought, "Great", after a perfect finish last night, I wouldn't be able to take photos outside, but to my surprise and joy, the sun came out. The Master Quilt Holder and I braved the mosquitoes to take some outside photos but decided to include an inside photo with Susannah the goat who, thankfully is metal, because it looks like she's ready to take a chomp on some Echinaceas. Now that this quilt is a finally finished and part of the festival, I can visit and enjoy the other great quilts on the Bloggers Quilt Festival. Next year, I hope I remember that I don't need to make a new quilt just for the Festival or will I? I got out of a few things yesterday because I needed to focus on finishing this quilt--I don't need to tell Hubby that there was no Quilt Emergency after all. Sealed lips would be appreciated.
Hope everyone is enjoying this year's Quilt Festival and thanks again to Amy for hosting. This is a great way to visit other Quilters' blogs, get inspired by wonderful quilts and make new blog buddies.
