Friday, October 24, 2014

Mod 9-Patch - Blogger's Quilt Festival

Welcome to my blog, if you've come over here from the Blogger's Quilt Festival!  And welcome back to my regular readers.  I'm so happy you're here!

First of all, I'd like to send a huge THANKS! to Amy for all her hard work in getting this on-line Quilt Festival underway, with great sponsors and awesome prizes too.  The Festival is my favorite on-line event of the year.  Where else can you see hundreds of quilts all while in your jammies with your fave beverage?  It's available any time you want to visit, all without miles of walking and no crowded parking lots - just lots of quilts!  And I get to meet new-to-me quilters and make new friends.  I love it!

Here is my first entry in the BQF this time:


Mod 9-Patch: Comma Musings
65 x 77 inches
Entered in the Modern category

This was my first real foray into making a Modern quilt.  I found the Comma by Zen Chic line of charm squares and fell in love with them.  I adore fabrics that have text on them!  It took me awhile to decide what the best pattern would be to use these particular charms.  And then I remembered seeing the Modernized Disappearing Nine Patch tutorial over on Kristy Daum's St. Louis Folk Victorian blog. Her tute was so easy to understand and follow.  I'm just thrilled at how great this came out!


I had fun playing with the blocks for the Modernized Disappearing Nine-Patch.  I was looking for a way to stretch the two packs of charm squares to get a bigger quilt, and this design fit the bill.  There's lots of open space in the blocks.  I used a kind-of-silvery grey solid for background - I didn't want to overwhelm the prints.  I'm really happy with the grey.  Most of the 9-patches use only 4 squares of the print fabric, which worked out great with the packs of charm squares.  I actually had enough charms to do 2 or 3 blocks that used 5 of the charms, just for a little extra variety.  That's one of the fun parts of the MD9P pattern - there's room for some improvisation of your own in the individual block design.

My long-armer Shari and I worked out the best quilting design for this quilt.  I actually found this pattern on Pinterest, and sent Shari the link to the photo.  Shari then free-hand quilted the pattern.  My usual choice is a curvy quilting pattern over a geometric pieced pattern, but I think this design fits this quilt well.  I think the quilting and the fabric work really well together to give a "modern" vibe to the quilt.


I put that ubiquitous IKEA "number" fabric on the back.  Again, text on fabric!  It makes my heart happy.



I did a piped binding (edited to add: technically a flange, as it has no filling) on this quilt, because I thought it needed that little pop of color out on the edge.  This is the first quilt I've ever tried this on and was a little worried about how easy the technique would be.  It was so easy!  I even got all 4 corners perfect, which never happens for me.  I'm ready to do this type of binding again, because it was so quick and easy.


You may have noticed what appears to be a ribbon on the quilt in the top photo. Here is a close-up of that Participation Ribbon from the quilt show.  Every quilt entered received a ribbon, all of them made by Judy, our featured quilter.  Isn't it sweet?  Even though I didn't win any awards, this quilt is a winner in my book.  It came out exactly like I wanted it to!

13 comments:

  1. great quilt - piping look wonderful and I love the script fabric!

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  2. love the piping on the binding. great quilt

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  3. Love this! It might be the answer to....what will I do with this charm pack???

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  4. Great way to use charm packs. And I really like the background too :)

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  5. Pretty quilt and the quilting really does it up right! Love the piped binding too. That's something I haven't tried yet.

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  6. Wow, it's sooo very pretty! I love your piped binding - I need to try that. And the silvery gray is nicer than white, I think :-)

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  7. Nice binding and I love the fabric... I've made a quilt from that same line! I need to get some of that ikea fabric! So yummy!

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  8. Beautiful and love the backing! I have never tried the disappearing 9 patch...but love how yours turned out!

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  9. Your first modern quilt is a beauty!! I love the Comma range too. I don't think I've seen that piping binding before, it really works to add a special something to the edges.

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  10. Love this! I fell in love with Comma, too. I still have most of a jelly roll left over from the quilt I made, so there's another Comma quilt in my future! Great job!

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  11. That piping in the binding looks fabulous! What a great quilt. The quilting and backing are the perfect touch for your quilt.:)

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  12. Great quilt! The quilting is perfect for it and I love the grey fabric for the background. It really lets the other fabrics play center stage. I have had trouble using charm packs but it sounds like they were good for this project.

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