Blogger's Quilt Festival

Welcome to Indigo Threads!  I hope you enjoy looking around.  A big Thank You to Amy for putting on this wonderful Quilt Festival again . . . it's so much fun to visit all the other bloggers and see all the beautiful quilts.  I would hazard a guess that this is the world's best quilt show you can see without leaving home!  So pull up your comfy chair, grab your beverage of choice and don't forget a few snackies!  Enjoy the show. . . .


"Button, Button"  25 inches high by 29 inches wide


My entry in the Quilt Festival is called "Button, Button", for obvious reasons!  This was my challenge quilt for my local guild this year.

We did a color challenge this year, and we drew paint chips to get our assigned colors.  We had to draw one dark paint chip and one light one.  My paint chips were eggplant and light lilac.  This photo is closer to the true colors than the first one.  These colors were not only difficult to find in fabric, they're tough to photograph and capture the right color.

This idea was one I had sketched out 4 or 5 years ago, and never seemed to get to.  I wanted to practice Lazy Gal Tonya's free-pieced letters (see her book "Word Play Quilts" in my sidebar - due out in December!).  So, I decided to combine the two ideas. 

"Button Button" had some technical challenges to it, and I tried some new things that I thought were successful. 

This quilt was the most letters I've done.  It was challenging and fun.  The letters get easier the more you do them, although I had a little trouble getting them right as I kept confusing where the dark and light fabrics went. *grin*  I'm even pleased with the hardest letter - "W".  And I had to figure out how to do the question mark.  It took two tries to get one that was right, but I'm really happy with it.

I had some difficulty deciding on the border, but finally decided simple was best.  I didn't want anything that would detract from the letters or the buttons.  I kept the quilting simple for the same reason.

The technicalities of how to construct this were interesting.  I put some light interfacing on the borders to help support the buttons, then I quilted.  I ended up putting a false back over the first one that I had quilted through and attached the buttons to - I wanted to hide all those ugly knots.  It worked great!

I added a lot of buttons from my collection, and hardly made a dent in it!  I used mostly buttons that were special to me - from clothes I sewed for me and my children, buttons from my Mom and Grandmother, buttons to signify various places I've lived, and so on. 

This quilt won 3rd place in the Guild's Challenge Reveal, and then won a blue ribbon and Best of Class in the county fair.   That was such a good feeling.  From now on, it will be hanging in my quilt studio for me to enjoy every day.

I hope you'll come back to visit again, but first go enjoy all the rest of the quilts in the Blogger's Quilt Festival!