Blogger's Quilt Festival: "The Eternity Quilt" and "The New York Cat Mat"

My two quilts for the Blogger's Quilt Festival are the Eternity Quilt and the New York Cat Mat.

Eternity Quilt

I made this for a creative project my church service was putting together. It was ridiculously complex, and only after I finished it did I realise there was a much much MUCH easier way to put it together! *facepalm*

However, it was also my first wholly self-quilted quilt using the quilting machine at my LQS (The Avanti HQ at Hobbysew Top Ryde). And, of course, it had to be a complicated design. The quilting I had planned for this baby was not only not rectangular, it featured negative space, and the need for some very fine stippling to bring out the negative space. Never let it be said I'm not up for a challenge!

a super-sized picture version

The Eternity Quilt
Quilt Measurements: 94" x 94"
Special Techniques used: Quilting around negative space.
Quilted By: Sel @ Mad Quilter's Disease (a.k.a. me!)

I'm quite pleased with it, even if it's not technically perfect. It's going in the Sydney Quilt Show 2013 - my first quilt show!

The New York Cat Mat

The name of this one is both true and slightly humourous, since it was intended as a 'mini quilt' but the cats have ended up colonising it.

It was made during the New York Beauty Quilt Along by Sew Sweetness back in February last year. I started in jewel-toned batiks, but then found I didn't like the colours quite as much as I thought I would. So I only ended up making 6 blocks - two of them the basic "Block 0".

I quilted it with Penny Poppleton's machine ("Thor", a Bernina 400) and it turned out rather better than I expected. I wanted to practise some of the FMQ techniques in Angela Walter's famous book "Free-Motion Quilting" on a home machine, and although it was a little small and fiddly to undertake, Thor never failed me!

I left the 'spikes' unquilted, but closely quilted just about everything else in the quarter-circle sections, including the centre dots which were close-quilted spirals, and then did a mini version of my standard 'fiery curls' FMQ pattern (also visible on the Eternity Quilt).

The New York Cat Mat
Quilt Measurements: 11" x 28"
Special Techniques used: Paper-piecing, free-motion quilting.
Quilted By: Sel @ Mad Quilter's Disease (a.k.a. me!)