QuiltCon Making in Spare Moments

In the spare moments between class and collaborations, I have been working my way towards my first submission to Quilt Con. I'm pretty pumped. It is a scale up of a Lenten Twelve (below) from this spring combined with some of the quilt printing I have been experimenting with, such as Lenten Twelve II and Evening Star.

I wanted higher impact, so I scaled up to 3' x 3.' It's funny because piecing it took just as much time as the little one, but voila: more bang for your buck! I say that now, but I know that it will take me longer to quilt it...

Then I printed it with my iconic hydrangea print and blocked out the white bars from being printed. (Iconic is my way of saying that I have used that hydrangea print for so many projects now that...well...I am looking forward to designing new patterns.) I bit the bullet and loosely free-motion quilted around all of the printed hydrangeas, and now the past two evenings have been spent staring at the quilt trying to decide how to proceed with the quilting.

I have two questions for you:

1. Is there a specific way that you must tie off your quilting on the back for an exhibition? Must we bury our threads on the back? Can we reverse a little? Is it personal preference?

2. How big is too big of an area to have un-quilted on a quilt?

I hope your QuiltCon making is going smoothly and wrapping up! Or that you are enjoying watching everyone else sweat while you stay above the scramble.

Best,

Kelsey

Follow the progress of this quilt with the links below:

Inspiration

Finish

Lenten Twelves : Five

I never thought I'd be one to love a quilt of mine so imperfect as this, but I do. Several of the corners don't quite match up and in an attempt to beat them into aligned submission, I ended up not catching the edge of the fabric. Of course my favorite closeup below displays the slip. Ah well, c'est la vie. On a whim, I decided to finish the edge by folding it over a quarter inch and stitching along the edge. Mostly successful. Very wobbly. I may have whipstitched a stray inch or two that I missed catching there as well. Nobody look too closely. We're all human, right?

I am, however, pretty excited about the composition. I'm loving the grey on grey pistachios look that I started with last week's lenten quilt, and my all time favorite bit is the quilting. I didn't want an all over quilt pattern so I sat and stared and squinted for quite some time until Brent suggested the matchstick quilting. I love it. Can't wait to see where this series takes me next!

If you missed the Lenten Twelves Intro Post, follow the link and read it now for background on the challenge my mum and I took up this Lent. If you'd like to join us or just follow along you can find us on instagram with #LentenTwelves or just check out her blog Fibermusing and her Lenten Twelves. Find my Lenten Twelve One, Lenten Twelve Two, Lenten Twelve Three, and Lenten Twelve Four.