Sweet Escape Quilt

I feel like I have a fair bit to say about this quilt.  

Like, "it's bigger than it looks in the picture!" 

"and those are 1.5" wide strips!"

"and isn't the quilting amazing?" 

(I didn't quilt it)

Let's start at the beginning though...



Camille of Thimbleblossoms started a quiltalong with prizes.  One of the prizes was a bundle of patterns from her shop (of your own choice!)  I've always been a sucker for Thimbleblossoms patterns, so this is totally what spurred me on to make this quilt!

I likely would not have made this quilt otherwise, because it has a lot of tedious sewing of tiny strips!  Even though the odds are always long of winning a prize like this, I thought it would be fun to try.  Then I had the idea of making this pattern in a rainbow spectrum.  Starting in the middle of the star with red and ending up with indigo/violet on the outside corners.

Amazingly this quilt didn't take that long to put together.  For this one I cut all my strips ahead, not following my own advice for only making a few blocks at a time.  The quiltalong offered incentive to keep moving so that I could post my progress and be included in the draw.

I had some wide back fabric from Carolyn Friedlander which was perfect for this quilt!

And now a bit about the quilting!  A friend on Instagram, @tracyloukata, contacted me about quilting a few of my tops.  She was wanting practice on her newly acquired longarm quilter, so if I sent these tops to her she'd quilt them for free!

Of course I jumped at the chance, and look what a beautiful job she did!  I love the texture and look of the swirls.  They're mesmerizing and make me want to practice some more with this pattern on my home machine.

My mom expreseds some admiration for this quilt, so I was more than happy to give it to her.  A partial thank you for some babysitting she did for me...  And I get to see it sitting on her chair when I visit!