Blogger's Quilt Festival - Fall 2010

"Forgotten Charms" is the name of my latest finished quilt and my entry for the Blogger's Quilt Festival - Fall 2010.

Several years back, I purchased a charm pack that I fell in love with at the LQS.  At the time, I was thinking of making the fabrics into a patchwork bag or a cushion cover.  I didn't have many quilting cottons in my stash at that point, and I didn't have the budget to buy coordinating yardage to make my charms into something bigger.   Waiting and dreaming about what  I would make with the charms, they were put aside.

 Years passed and I would feel guilty that I still hadn't used those charms.   This past spring I joined Jacquie's Spring to Finish Challenge and these charms made their way onto my "to-sew" list.   I stumbled upon a scrap bag at the LQS that had fabrics that would co-ordinate with my forgotten charm pack and I started to dream up how I would stitch them all into a quilt.  Rather than cutting up the charms, I decided to frame them with the scrap bag strips.  However, this left me with a small quilt.  I turned to my friends in blogland to ask for their suggestions in how to proceed and received more than advice, I received an offer of more charms!  Amazingly, it just so happened that my lovely friend, Nicolette, had purchased the same charm pack years ago and she had some leftover she would share!  My finished quilt includes charms from her -  making this quilt extra special to me.  Thanks, Nicolette!

Leftover pieces from the front were stitched together to add the piece-y strip I love so much, to the quilt back.

Unfortunately, progress stalled out when I reached the quilting stage because I wanted to come up with my own design for it.  I didn't want to quilt it with straight lines and I didn't want to just default to stipple quilting.   I knew I wanted a curvy line design and I drew up my idea on paper. My trouble lay in transferring my design onto the quilt top.  I machine quilt on my domestic Janome and other than using painter's tape for the initial straight line guide for large quilts, I don't mark my quilts, I just freehand machine quilt.  I have a fear of using a marking tool that will not be temporary (even if it promises to be removable), so I was testing different ways of marking on fabric scraps to find something that worked.   I gave up.
 

Deciding that it was time to just finish this quilt, I began machine quilting a continuous, curlicue type design.  It's whimsical and I am pleased with how the curvy quilting offsets the linear design of the blocks and the texture it has added.  The surface texture I love, will only increase after I wash and dry my finished quilt.

Quilting complete, I wanted to keep up my finishing momentum - without another trip to the fabric store.  Determined to find something in my stash to use for the binding,  I pulled out some decorator weight cotton from the special  (otherwise known as the fabrics I bought that I have a hard time cutting into) stash.  This heavier weight fabric has a larger and more textured weave to it than the cottons used in the quilt, so I think it adds a little extra dimension to the binding. 

 

Finished just this week, Forgotten Charms will  now be the quilt I snuggle under to watch movies.