Best of 2015: Quilt Matters

Happy holidays! Cheryl from Meadow Mist Designs is hosting a Best of 2015 linky party. What better way to reflect on the quilty year than to review your top posts of the year? Here are mine -- top views, with a favourite thrown in. :)

TGIFF! - Bubbles for Malcolm

TGIFF! - Welded Links

TGIFF! - Colour Pop top

Bloggers Quilt Festival - October Sky

Birchen - À la Quilt Matters

TGIFF! - Night Flight

Linking up with MeadowMist's Best of 2015.

Now that the holidays are over, I'm back in the studio. More to come soon! :)

TGIFF! - Night Flight

Oh happy, happy TGIFF! all! I'm thrilled to be sharing my finished Night Flight quilt. This quilt started with the scraps from Quilt Fix.

I used the leftover triangles from the 45 degree seams from Quilt Fix to make half-square triangles (HSTs) and then paired them into flying geese units. These flying geese then begged to be put into rainbow formation. Who am I to say no when they lined up so nicely?

We discussed how much negative space was enough and then the quilting options. The 'quick' part of this quilt ended when we got to the quilting though. I really love this walking foot technique, but it definitely doesn't fall into the 'quick' category. I think I spent more time quilting Night Flight than all the other parts of the quilt process combined.

It was so worth it. I'm so pleased with the finished look and the flow of colours in the quilting thread (different colour for each flying geese unit). The walking foot quilting in moon ray formation has all the precision I was hoping for.

Finished Size: 24" by 29"
Fabric: Kona Charcoal, Scraps from a Kona Dark Jelly Roll
Thread: Aurifil (2630 for the grey and many other numbers for the flying geese), Guterman, Coats & Clark

An InLinkz Link-up

Night Flowers - Quilting Options

I'm playing with quilting designs for Night Flight. First, I picked out the threads. Mmm, yummy! Yep, I'm going to mix it up with different thread weights and brands. I'm such a badass.

Next, I tried some different motifs with dry erase markers on my plexiglass trial quilting sheets.

First up, matchstick quilting with triangular spirals.

That's a lot of starts and stops.

Arrow spirals. I like that flow a lot better and somewhat fewer stops and starts. 

Maybe something different in the negative space though, like this maze.

Or maybe a smaller version.

And then I decided to play with the walking foot quilting style I learned from Heather Lair.

I'm definitely smitten with one of them. Can you guess which one?

Have an awesome day!

Finishing-Along for Q1

Happy Friday! I'm hoping to participate in the 2015 Finish-Along a bit more than I did in 2014. This year, Adrianne at On the Windy Side is leading the charge. 

For this quarter, I'm hoping to finish:

Carsick:

And Night Flight:

Project Prism:There's another project that I'll be doing this quarter, but I don't have the fabrics just yet. 

Linking up with the Q1 Finish-Along! How about you?

Night Flight - A Finished Top

Quick Fix > Quick Scraps > Quick Top! Well, I couldn't get that strip of HSTs out of my head so I ended up sticking with those Kona scraps from Quick Fix and pairing it with some Kona Charcoal. Very, very happy with the piecing -- most of the points actually meet! :D

Now I'm playing with the placement of the strip. 

Leaning (ha ha) towards asymmetry:

More negative space:

Centred:

Still more negative space:

Opinions always welcome! 

Linking up with Scraptastic Tuesday and Oh Scrap! Check them out for some scrappy goodness.