Bloggers Quilt Festival–Fall 2012

Thanks to Amy of Amy’s Creative Side for sponsoring the Bloggers Quilt Festival again this fall.  Jump over to her sight and take a look at all the other quilts on her Bloggers Quilt Festival.  I think there is voting too so take a look at that information too.  The quilt I am going to show you is the latest miniature quilt I finished this summer.  I call it “Silk Refrain” and it measures 11 1/4 x 10 1/2”.It is made of 100% silk fabric that is woven with one color of thread going horizontal and another color going vertical.  If you enlarge my close up photos below of this quilt’s details you might be able to see the different colors of the woven fabric.  I believe this type is called Shot Silk.  When the fabric is viewed from different angles it changes color and it has a beautiful soft sheen.  Because this fabric is shiny it is very difficult to get good photos of the quilt but  I think if you click on the photos I post to get larger versions you might be able to see the details more easily.I purchased this fabric in Paducah, KY at the 2011 AQS show from one of the vendors and I knew when I bought it that I wanted to do a whole cloth quilt from it.  I wrote about the making of this quilt on my blog Nebraska Views starting Friday Aug. 24, 2012 through Aug. 30th. I quilted it with YLI #100 silk thread using my Bernina 730 sewing machine using the BSR (Bernina Stitch Regulator).  The BSR really aided me when quilting this quilt as I wanted a smaller stitch and a regular sized stitch which the foot helped me to achieve.  I set my stitch length down to 1.8 so it has pretty short stitches.  I also used the walking foot for the straight line skinny border.  I tried doing those straight lines by sight and free hand but they looked really wobbly so I un-stitched them and re-sewed them using the walking foot.I usually use a thin batting like Thermore for my miniatures but decided to try wool batting this time.  I wanted the design areas to puff up a little and didn’t want to try to trapunto on this small of motif.  It really worked great and I have another whole cloth silk miniature in the process of being made using the same silk fabric but a different color and am using the wool batting in it too.I entered this quilt in the 2012 Nebraska State Fair and it won first place machine quilted miniature and 1st place miniature over all.  I was super thrilled to say the least.  Enjoy looking at all the quilts on Amy’s Creative Side…just scroll to the bottom and click on the individual photo links to the fabulous quilts!

Quilt Stats
Entry Number:  405
Designed, Pieced, and Quilted by:  Me
Technique: Wholecloth
Size: 11 1/2” x 10 1/4”
Category: Doll/Miniature Quilt

Until Later,
Lynn