Sunday, October 25, 2015

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Pinwheels Plus

My second entry into the Blogger's Quilt Festival is Pinwheel's Plus.  I'm entering it into the Machine Quilted Category.


Not sure where the idea for this quilt came from.  At some point I decided I wanted to use some of my beautiful low volume fabrics and the soft aquas fabrics, but beyond that, I had no clue.  Except lately I've been really drawn to all the cool plus quilts that I've been seeing on blogs, in magazines, etc..  And also I've developed a passion for pinwheels, so this quilt was born.  

The reason I'm entering into the machine quilted category is because this was really quite a challenge to quilt - there's so much blank white space, and well, I just looked at it and freaked out a little.  I started with the pinwheels and the low volume pluses - that idea came fairly easily and I was pleased with it.   Next was the small squares.  I even had difficulty deciding what color thread to use - white made sense, but i had used gold  and that seemed like a decent, but scary idea.  But no design  could think of really excited me.  I decided I was over-thinking it, so I just went with my first idea.  I quilted three of them before I decided I couldn't live with what I'd done there, so out came Clover, my best seam ripper.   When I tried my second idea -the radiating lines, it immediately seems right. but suddenly the quilt started looking sort of Art Deco to me, which wasn't the original vision I had for it at all.  Lacking a better idea and not unpleased with the results, I continued on and finished them.



Now I had to confront the white spaces around the quilt. Yikes, really yikes.  I could not think of any design whatsoever that I thought would work.  I kind of wanted to keep it minimal, but that wouldn't work with the rest of the piece.  Anyway, I finally literally just stared quilting, and this is the result.  
I think it works pretty well, too.  

I definitely learned something in the making of this piece, and I'm definitely pleased with it.  Even though it turned out pretty differently than I originally intended, I feel like I went with the creative spirit and it took me to the right place.

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