A year in quilts...

Happy New Year!  I have had another quilt filled year!  I would add that if you are interested in any details about any of these pictures, I do have links at the top of the page for quilt finishes.

Linking up with Lynne at Lily's Quilts for Fresh Sewing Day!  And I just happened to receive her lovely book 500 Quilt Blocks for Christmas!  Yay!

It looks like my garden...

Name:  It Looks Like My Garden

Design: Playing with values, 6" HSTs, inspired by Katie Pedersen tutorial

Size:  approx 84" by 90"

Fabric:  assorted fabrics and scraps in light and dark values

Quilted: by me with Aurifil 50 wt in light grey (2615)

I finished my values quilt.  I am in absolute love with this quilt. The explosion of colours and the play of values just hit all the right notes for me.  My friend Sue saw the quilt when it was on the design wall and she said, "Hey, it looks like your garden."  And it does so that is what I am calling it.  I have wanted to make a values quilt for years.  I have drooled over the values quilts that Katie Pedersen has made and I finally just had to do it.  I used a variety of fabrics from my stash. Scraps, samples, bits of odd fabric.  I was able to use up a lot of fabrics that would have lingered in my stash for who knows how long because they just work here.  There are some bits of Anna Maria Horner, some Sandi Henderson, some Kaffe Fassett and a whole bunch of who knows what.  There is even a print that may be a Martha Negley or Kaffe Fasset that has turnips and asparagus but chopped up in this quilt, it all works.  

 I took a lot of pictures at different times of the day because I was finding it tricky to photograph the colour intensity.  The evening shots like this one by the garden are a bit washed out but I wanted a picture by the flowers.

 So so details... The fabric is cut into 6" squares and then I made a zillion HSTs with light and dark volume fabrics.  Sometimes, the light volume fabric turns up as dark volume fabric in another HST. That is part of the fun.  I absolutely needed the design wall for this one.

The quilting was a workout.  I went for straight lines, 2 rows on either side of the seam lines vertically but not too close to the seams.  I used light grey Aurifil 2615 because I wanted the thread to blend more with all the colours.  I do love straight line quilting.  Really. Love. Straight line. Quilting.  I used a tone on tone purple fabric that has a flower print on it.  I actually got it at the thrift store some time ago and I think there must have been about 8 or 10 metres of it because I have been using it in quilts and for binidngs for years and it just keeps on delivering.  I find it to be a really lovely purple.  I used it in the quilt too.

And the back is a bunch of fabric.  Pieced bits of leftovers and a lovely text fabric from Stof.

See... it looks like my garden.

Linking up with Amanda Jean for Finish it up Friday.  This is a good finish.