Ireland-Inspired Quilt

[katiebread]

This quilt took about a year of time, several cusses, trips to the fabric store to get more fabric, and lots of patience.  I worked on it mostly at my future mother-in-law's house, where she has an excellent quilting set-up and is very generous with her stash, her machine, her time, and her advice.

I was inspired by the gorgeous patchwork-esqe landscape of Ireland when seen from the air.  The patchwork didn't make it so much into the final design, but it does remind me of plowed fields.  

She finished this off for me (last 5-6 strips and the binding) and mailed it this week.  I died of happiness.  

I sewed the strips directly on to the batting and the backing, if that makes any sense.  I think it's called window-shade quilting.  That's why some of the fabrics only appear at one end of the quilt; I ran out of them after I had already sewed down a dozen or so strips.  This is my third quilt, and the biggest one I've made yet!




Naturally, even though I took these with as much natural light as I could get, the flash vs. non-flash pictures came out very different.  The true colors are somewhere in-between, I think.


The back, so you can see how it's quilted in straight lines across.  In my head, the little white dots are grazing sheep.

[PixieVal]

beautiful colors!

[tcmatteson]

That is truly amazing! I love the colors and the straight across strips The size of this quilt is astonishing! Great job!

[MareMare]

Wow, this is gorgeous! Your MIL-to-be sounds lovely. What is that block on the quilt back?

[Padester]

  Love the grazing sheep!  To me they were only white polka dots, but totally became grazing sheep after reading that!   

Love this.  Will have to look into that manner of quilting - seems like it might be a bit of a time-saver, yes?

[straw_holder]

Wow, I seriously LOVE your quilt!  The colors are so beautiful, and I *love* the grazing sheep on the back! 

Can you explain more what you mean by window-shade quilting?

[jennieingram]

Beautifully done dear!

[sweetpea74]

Really nice quilt! Love the colour scheme, it really does look like a landscape.

[katiebread]

Yay compliments!  Thanks ya'll!
The block on the back of the quilt is the name of the quilt, my name, the date, and where I live now.  Sorry I didn't explain that before.  My future mother-in-law of awesome also added that for me.
It is possible that I invented the term "window-shade quilting," or at least that Google has no idea what I'm talking about.  At any rate, I drew a quick MS Paint tutorial to show how I made the quilt.

[roccstarr75]

Yay compliments!  Thanks ya'll!
The block on the back of the quilt is the name of the quilt, my name, the date, and where I live now.  Sorry I didn't explain that before.  My future mother-in-law of awesome also added that for me.
It is possible that I invented the term "window-shade quilting," or at least that Google has no idea what I'm talking about.  At any rate, I drew a quick MS Paint tutorial to show how I made the quilt.

OMG!!!  This is genius!!! I am sooooooooooooooo going to try this.  I am planning a quilt for my mom and it was already going to be a pattern similar to this.  I was dreading it, thinking about how I was going to get the bulk of it into my machine to quilt it!  Problem solved!  Also this looks like a great place to try out the basting spray I just bought.   Glueing the backing and batting together seems like it would stay neater for this proccess than pinning, plus there's no risk of accidentally sewing a pin into the quilt and not being able to get it out.   Thank you!!Thank you!!Thank you!!Thank you!!Thank you!!Thank you!!Thank you!!