Love Nest Quilt Contest. Check out my entry!

I stumbled across a contest the other day.  The Gen  X Quilters are sponsoring  the Love Nest Quilt Contest.  It's for bed-sized modern quilts.  The deadline is Feb. 9th.  I first thought of the mod blocks I've been working with but I just can't meet the deadline with that quilt.  Then I remembered this sassy bright quilt!

This is one of my favorite quilts.  I started it a couple years ago on retreat with my guild.  When I packed up for retreat, I didn't have any specific projects in mind to work on.  That can be a very bad way to go.  I had a couple of new quilt books and a new passion for brights and pink and white.  So I started packing.....and packing.....and packing.  One thing about retreat is that you don't want to get there and then remember the perfect fabric that you left at home.  Well lemme tell you, I surely did not let that happen.  I had the Mt. Everest of fabrics on my work table!!!

This Heather Ross fabric is possibly my faborite fabric EVER!  If there was a fire and I could only save one fabric, it would be this one.  I got it on ebay several years ago (yup, ebay again!  just so you know, I no longer allow myself to search for Heather Ross on ebay.)  I got a whole yard of this and a yard of the same in blue, both for a very good price.  If you can even find it anymore, it goes for a bazillion dollars.  I sure wish I had known about HR years ago when I started my stash.  Anyway, back to the quilt.  It started with the pink VW buses, I started making bright scrappy stars.

  I made 25 of the stars and put them up on my design wall (on retreat I take a flannel backed tablecloth to use), and pondered setting ideas.  Then I remembered the books I had brought.  One of them was Kim Schaefer's  Flower Festival.  I poked through it and decided to alternate my stars with some applique blocks.  I made lots of flowers and could not resist adding some critters too.  Hi Ladybug!

I love love love this caterpiller!  And can you see my other Heather Ross fabric with the doggies?

I figured with all those flowers, there would certainly be a butterfly.  I had some fun with prairie points too.  My first experience with prairie points.  I wanted to dress up the border a little so I just took fabric squares, folded them twice on the diagonal and tucked them in the seam when I added the outer border.  I put little clusters of them at random around the quilt.  I didn't tack or quilt them down, I like the sort of 3-d effect from them.                                                          

The pink batik that I used for the inner border is so darn sweet that you practically need some insulin to just look at it.                                                                 

I wish I could have gotten better pictures of my quilting.  If you click on this photo and enlarge it, maybe you can see the butterfly.  I went through a stack of books of quilt designs and picked out lots of different flowers and this butterfly.  I traced the designs on paper (I have a roll of 'examining table' paper like they have in doctor's offices), then I stacked some paper and sewed along my traced lines.  This way I duplicated multiples of the designs.  Pin the papers around the border, sew right through the paper, tear it off, and voila!!  I think this is much easier than marking.

I used light pink thread for the quilting.  I am an insecure quilter and my big fear is always that crappy quilting will show up too much. 

Hopefully I'll get over that soon.                                 

I guess it's sort of silly to put all that effort into something that will be barely noticeable.  Let that be a lesson to me the next time I go to quilt something.

So there you have it!  I wanted to use some bright fabrics and I had a new book for inspiration.  I started playing and the next thing I knew, I had this fabulous quilt that I just love.  If you love it too, head on over here to the Love Nest contest and vote for it.  Thank you in advance, lol. 

Now I am off to make some tasty treats to eat while watching the Super Bowl. 

oh!  ps -  this quilt won a 3rd place ribbon at the Maryland State Fair!