Blogger's Quilt Festival: my Old Italian Block "OIB"

While everyone is off having the time of their lives at Fall Market and I'm here coming down from the natural high of Sewing Summit, thank goodness for Blogger's Quilt Festival. Amy from Amy's Creative Side is nice enough to distract those who can't attend market with this fun event twice a year. October 26 – 31 Linky open, Nov 1 – 4 Nominations are made, Nov 5 -8 Vote for your favorites, Nov 9 Winners announced.

My entry was an easy choice: The Old Italian Block wedding quilt that I made as a surprise wedding gift. To be honest, I was tickled to have more than one finished quilt to choose from since Spring!

Show and Tell at SBAMQG, the front

Show and Tell at SBAMQG, the back

Here I am talking with my hands at our MQG meeting - relieved to be finished.   There are many blog posts about the creation of this quilt (seen here, here, here and here) because I knew I wanted to chronicle the steps and sharing the story made the very long process a shorter journey.

Blogger’s Quilt Festival Stats

Finished quilt measures : 66"x72″ FMQ with Bamboo Silk batting

Special techniques used : Rotary Cutting Revolution: New One-Step Cutting

Pieced and Quilted by : Me at home

Best Categories : Favorite Scrap Quilt, ROYGBIV Quilt, Bed Quilt 

Pulling the fabrics took - um like forever! Value was key and although not your traditional rainbow pattern, I wanted it to cover the entire color wheel and am please to say it does.

A rainbow of fabric

Organization was also key - and not necessarily my strong point. I couldn't take a wing it/improv approach to this one and needed 132 units in specific combinations. The stack, slice and shuffle method was fun to do.

slicing and dicing

The pizza box was a great tip and in the end I did have a few extra parts because I'm just not that decisive and calculating in my creative process.

 Rotary Cutting Revolution

I'd like a small to go - hold the pizza

Working with so much bias was challenging.  I'm please with how flat the finished quilt lays despite the variety of fabrics used. My motto: Scrappy Rocks!

chain piecing - love the automatic foot lift

A traditional block with modern designer fabrics like Kaffe Fassett, Martha Negley, Philip Jacobs, Amy Butler, Liberty Art and Monica Solorio-Snow embraces one of my favorite elements of the Modern Quilting aesthetics as well as use of negative space on the back.

stacked in order ready pieced

At times it was tedious I will admit.  But I do think that there is something especially gratifying when you finally get to the finish line.

In the future, I want to move towards creating my own pattern design rather than replicate a quilt already in existence.  It's not the same as the one by Anita Grossman Soloman on the books cover but it's indistinguishably similar.

close up and colorful

A shot of it on our Queen Size bed

From a distance there is a definite rainbow effect which I adore. Close up it's really shocking how many different fabrics actually get along.

SBAMQG and my OIB in our Quilt Show

When it was hanging at our MQG show I had more than one person comment about how puzzled they were that one fabric could actually look good next to another and be cohesive.  If you saw them on a bolt, you'd never dream of mixing them in the same quilt - but I did!

Last Spring I entered Quilter's Festival for the first time with the Mod Mosaic aka Catalyst and reading that post from May brings me full circle.

I got to meet them in person!

Small world: here it is a year and a half later and two of the ladies I got to hang out with were from the 3x6 bee I made these two Mod Mosaic blocks for: Nydia and Shawn. I never would have guessed that twist.

I mention in the Spring post wanting to take Amy's class at Sewing Summit - and indeed I did! She even sat next to me in Amber's class and let me browse the spiral bound version of Modern Quilts from the Blogging Universe. (totally want that book) Amy really is the sweetest person - so be sure to check out all the link ups and say hello on her blog (that is, after you say hello on mine!)

HAPPY QUILTING! Karen