Blogger's Quilt Festival Entry: Favorite Scrappy Quilt

I'm entering my Patchwork Love quilt in the Favorite Scrappy Quilt category of the Blogger's Quilt Festival. I made this quilt for the Tula Pink Sewalong hosted by Sew Sweetness; I loved Tula's original quilt (shown at the bottom of this post) but knew that what made it so neat was the machine quilting, and I just didn't have those kind of skills. So I went the patchwork route instead! 

I randomly pieced together large "blocks" in each of the four colors I chose and then made them fit together. You can see the quilt, pre-assembly, below.

I really loved piecing this--no rules, no measuring...

I quilted it on my home machine. Straight lines in the letters, pebbles around the letters, and then a diagonal pattern of straight lines, wavy lines and larger circles radiating out from the center.

Tula's original LOVE quilt:

I hung my version in our guild's show 2 weeks ago, and now I'll be sending it off to Margaret's Hope Chest, an organization that gives quilts to those in need in the Grand Rapids area.
Thanks for stopping by!

A Year of Lovely Finishes: 3/4 Complete!

As the queen of last minute...my A Lovely Year of Finishes goal for September was easy, but I still managed to stretch it out until the last minute, hand stitching the back of the binding on in the car last night on the way home from a quick out-of-town weekend. It's hard to see in this photo, but...

My LOVE quilt is bound! It will hang in our local quilt show in 2 weeks and then I'm sending it to Margaret's Hope Chest.

A Lovely Year of Finishes September Goal

September's looking busy, so I'm picking an easy goal for myself this month for the Lovely Year of Finishes: binding my LOVE quilt that I just finished quilting. I even have the binding fabric (black solid), so I'm partway there!

p.s. Just got my sewing machine back from its first check up/tune up in six years (yikes!)...so happy to have it back! I was able to drop it off right before I left town for a week and change, but I'd been experiencing withdrawal the couple days I've been home and it wasn't. Took it for a test drive this afternoon and everything is running smoothly. Hooray!

August Goal...complete!

My August Lovely Year of Finishes goal was to get my "LOVE" quilt quilted. 

Done!

So far, this is probably the quilt that I put the most time thinking and planning how I was going to quilt it--I just couldn't decide, and some of the things I wanted to do, I didn't feel like I could actually accomplish.

What I ended up doing:
--1/4" spaced straight line quilting in the letters; pebble quilting around the letters, and then "stripes" in a diamond around the center section. The stripes are alternately filled with wavy lines and circles.

I am happy with how the patchwork is still the main focus of the quilt--that was my main concern, making sure the quilting didn't distract from the piecing. I'm looking forward to getting this bound so I can wash it...hide some of the not as great stitches!