Blogger's Quilt Festival - Spring 2012

Welcome to my blog-o-sphere and my entry in the Spring Blogger's Quilt Festival!

Here is "Spinner"

The 'flags' around the 12 blades were issued during 2011 by Electric Quilt Company (the software company that puts out "Electric Quilt" design software. I love using this software and when they talked about there being a layout design contest at the end of the year, I knew I had to try to keep up each month with making the blocks. I chose to do 6" blocks since I didn't know what they would look like and typically am not a fan of the 'mystery' project, but wanted the challenge of the layout.

At the end of the year, I had all 12 blocks and layed them on my design wall wondering what to do with them. I opened up my EQ software and started with some very traditional ideas, but ultimately tried to create 12 blades and wanted to create a light to dark effect behind the blades to give it dimension. An accident in the fabric swatch definition within EQ introduced the idea of the multiple spirals in the background.

I love the variegation of values in colors and transitions between colors that are subtle. Changing each blade to transition gave it a bit more interest. I stuck with the colors in the 'flags' and grey just seemed like the right background.

My working title was "Waste Not Want Not" --if any of you are civil engineers, specifically in the water/waste water division of engineering, this might look like a large fan at the end of a sewer tunnel in a big city. HA! OK....I definitely couldn't go with that idea for a title, but "Spinner" seemed to fit.

The open spaces gave me lots of opportunity for free motion quilting. This was my first attempt at 'quilting it to death'! Thanks to Leah Day for inspiring some of the designs in my quilting.

Here are a few closeups. This one was taken while it was still on the quilting table and wasn't quite finished yet.

This is the right hand lower quadrant with the additional green edge and piped binding added after quilting and blocking (pardon the hand shadow at the bottom!

I have written a tutorial for how to draw it yourself in EQ and make the quilt. Click on the button at the top right of my blog page if you're interested in reading through the tutorial and/or if you are interested in downloading the EQ Project File.

This is quilt #398 in the festival. Nominations are open May 22-25. Not sure which category this quilt best fits, but perhaps pieced, professionally quilted, or wall hanging. Thanks for stopping by and enjoy the Blogger Festival!