Blogger's Quilt Festival Spring 2013

Yay!

It's one of my favorite times of the year...Blogger's Quilt Festival!

As a homeschooling mama, college senior's checkbook, and wife-extraordinaire (lol),  I don't get to jet off  Quilt Market or SewCon.  Shoot, I barely make it to my LQS at a respectable rate.

That's what makes this event so awesome...We (me, myself, and I-and YOU!) get to grab our beverages of choice, our iPads, pc's and electronic viewing devices and go to a virtual quilt for two weeks straight!

So grab your cuppa, slip on some comfy shoes (or go naked footed), put a box of Poptarts and juice boxes in front of your kids, lock the door and enjoy two rockin' weeks of the best the web has to offer! 

This year I'm entering my "Tree of Life" quilt in the Art Quilt Category.

Over a year ago, I fell in love with a print from Rett.  I emailed her and asked permission to share some of her incredible photos and tell her I was working on a quilt inspired by her "A Tree Grows".  Please stop by her blog!  She is a "quilter at heart" and her work is truly amazing!

Here is my initial "grid" of scrappy squares with white for the area where the "tree" would go.

I stitched together the yellows, oranges, reds and pink and took a large bowl as a template to cut out the "tree" and then pin basted it onto the sky and ground "grid".

Then I drew the trunk and branches onto a large piece of butcher's paper, transferred it to Heat N Bond fused to a beautiful, brown batik and cut out my pattern.

Ironing was done very carefully!

LOL

Using the same process, I cut out about a gazillion yellow dots for the "fireflies".

Ironing was done even more carefully!

Time for quilting!

Which was a whole other learning curve for me and stretched my limited FMQ skills to the max!

I used a variagated Sulky in blues for the sky.  FMQing swirls for the "fireflies" to play in.

A variagated orange, pink, red and green Sulky for the leaves on the tree.

I tried to stay "true" to Rett's concentric circles for bark and am really happy with that and the feel of the branches.  The grass is quilted with long, vertical "blades" of grass and the whole thing is bound with the same brown batik as the trunk and branches.

"Tree of Life" measures 17 1/2" sq and because of all the quilting, is pretty heavy!  I really enjoyed taking Rett's inspirational creativity into a new medium and her current works would make lovely quilts!

Thank you once again Rett!