Blogger's Quilt Festival

It seems that something very exciting is happening in quilt blog land.  Everyone is talking about it.  And participating in it.  So of course I just had to join in.  It is the annual...

Which is essentially a festival of all things quilty, and a competition too, with different categories and lots and lots of lovely prizes.  So first I had to decide which quilt I wanted to submit as my entry. The most obvious choice would be my most recently made quilt, the cot quilt for baby William:

But whilst I could enter it into the 'hand quilted' category, or the 'baby quilt' category, I couldn't help thinking about another little quilt that I made at the beginning of the year.  So I have decided to enter my dolly quilt... and hope for the best!

This quilt was inspired by the quilt 'Dotty About Dresden' in one of my favourite books 'Material Obsession' by Sarah Fielke and Kathy Doughty.  I love all the quilts in this book; I love their use of colour combinations, the hand stitching, their philosophy and most of all their fabric choices.  I couldn't resist having a go at making one myelf.  But, being heavily pregnant at the time (January 2012) I couldn't make the time committment of making a full sized quilt, so a dolly quilt seemed like the perfect compromise.  I had been dying to have a go at dresden plates for some time, so what better than to start by making just the one.  I appliqued it onto the background and made a scrappy border, before hand quilting it using using perle cotton no. 8 in purple and white. 

It is the last thing I made before William arrived.  It's special to me because I adapted a pattern to suit me, and it was the first time I had properly attempted hand quilting.  I just love the fabrics and I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process. 

Fingers crossed!

PS. Lots to post about tomorrow - I have been making again, and am just waiting for the rain to stop so that I can take a photograph outside :-)