Starry-Eyed Quilt: Blogger's Quilt Festival

Every year Amy hosts this great event called the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  If you haven't heard of it, you REALLY need to check it out!  Soooooooooo many inspirational quilts and new bloggers to discover!  This year I'm entering two quilts, one is my "Starry-Eyed Quilt" in the Throw Quilt category (here's the other one):

I recently blogged about this one and the method I used to make it.  Every print is from designer Anna Maria Horner.  Some new, some old, some VERY old.  Everyone loved and precious to me!

I got it all quilted up and ready to ship to its new home---and, yes, that means I'm not keeping it!  It's a shocker I know, but I do have, uh, several other Anna Maria Horner quilts to keep me warm! 

I used my favorite Innocent Crush print for the backing on this one and I couldn't be happier with the results, even though it was a case of using what I had on hand!  It's ones of the BEST feelings to find enough yardage for backing in my stash!

Before it was quilted this quilt made a nice curtain in my living room!  My husband thought it was a bit too much to stay there permanently.  Oh well! 

Look how pretty it looked with the light coming through!  

Hope you all enjoy the Festival and blog hopping!  Psssst!  Vote for me! :)

Best Bee Quilt Ever: Blogger's Quilt Festival

Every year Amy hosts this great event called the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  If you haven't heard of it, you REALLY need to check it out!  Soooooooooo many inspirational quilts and new bloggers to discover!  This year I'm entering two quilts, one is my "Best Bee Quilt Ever" in the Group/Bee Category (here's the other one):

I pretty much think this is the best quilt ever made, but I may be bias!  :)  This quilt is the culmination of two bees, The VIBs and the Twice Around the Block groups.  The ladies were each give a piece of every print of Anna Maria Horner's Good Folks and asked to make a block constructed of half-square triangles.  The results blew me away!

This is a little pre-quilting shot.

I had it professionally custom quilted by Krista Withers and she totally killed it!  See that fabulous "K" she worked in there?  

I decided on another Anna Maria Horner print for the backing (from Field Study).

I adore this quilt and it certainly holds a special place in my heart (and on my couch!)  Hope you all enjoy the Festival and blog hopping!  Psssst!  Vote for me! :)

Starry-Eyed Quilt and My Favorite Ruler

It's no secret that I REALLY love designer Anna Maria Horner's fabric.  What I love most is that when you look at some of the prints individually you may think, "meh".  However, when you put them all together, what should be a hot mess ends up being an explosion of colorful awesomeness......in my opinion at least!  I love to hoard my AMH, but sometimes I get really annoyed at myself for NOT using precious fabric.  I decided to go all out on this quilt!  I was using as much AMH as I could find in my stash--hard to find prints and all!  

I wanted to keep the pattern simple, but not as basic as square patchwork.  I decided on the Sawtooth Star mainly because I had a new ruler I wanted to try.  

This is my new favorite ruler!  The Flying Geese ruler!  Seriously, so freaking in love with this thing! It made putting this quilt together so easy, so fast, and with virtually perfect results.  I didn't have to trim one single block! I thought I'd give a brief overview on how this little guy works.  I got mine at JoAnn's and they carried two sizes, 3"x6" (what I have) and 4"x8".  Each ruler makes two sizes of geese.  Mine will make 1.5"x3" and 3"x6".  

Cut two squares according to the package direction for the size geese you want to make.  Place the squares rights sides together and center the smaller square on the larger one (I just folded creases in the squares to find the middle)  I ended up cutting my larger square .5" larger than they suggested because it gave me more wiggle room when I went to trim the blocks at the end.  

Draw a diagonal line through the smaller square and sew 1/4" on either side of the line, just like when you make HSTs.

Cut along the line you drew.

Open the resulting units and press toward the larger square.  Then place the squares right sides together matching the corners, NOT THE SEAMS IN THE MIDDLE.

The corners should be opposite fabrics.

Draw another diagonal line and sew 1/4" on either side, then cut on the line you drew.

This is the strangest step, but it's important! make a tiny snip in between the seams of each resulting unit.  Don't clip through the stitches holding it together! Then, you can press the seam allowance toward the larger square fabric on each side of the unit.  Trust me, this will make sense once you do it!

You end up with two weird looking blocks like this.  For reference, if you looked on the back of this block, my seam allowance would be clipped in the area where the tops of the red triangles meet.  All seam allowances are pressed to the red fabric.

Now it's time to break out the best ruler ever! This would also be a good time to bust out your rotating cutting mat if you have one.  Line up the ruler to the geese on your block and trim all the way around.

Ta-da! FOUR amazingly perfect geese!!!!  I know these seems like a bunch of steps, but the results are perfect and you get 4 units for your effort!  Seriously, I love this freaking ruler! For these blocks, I used (4) geese, (4) 3.5"squares, and (1) 6.5" square.  The block is 12.5" unfinished.

Made on my BabyLock Symphony

I love how wild and crazy this quilt turned out! It wasn't planned (a real challenge for me) and I didn't edit myself much in my fabric selection or pairing.  It's my stream-of-consciousness quilt!  Maybe I should rename it The Sound and the Fury quilt.  Jeez, I think my nerd is showing.  That high school term paper is still haunting me!  Hopefully some of you got that reference!