Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Bloggers’ Quilt Festival ~ Daisy a Day

I’m a little late to the party, as usual, but I just couldn’t resist joining in the fun of Amy’s Bloggers’ Quilt Festival again. Twice a year she hosts this mammoth event attracting some of the finest show-and-tell you’ll see in the entire quilting blogosphere.

Spring Blogger's Quilt Festival - AmysCreativeSide.com

After my debut last year I’m back again, this time sharing my all-time favourite quilt (so far!), Daisy a Day. I’m entering it in the Bed Quilt category.

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The moment I saw this design by Sandra Dart in Australian Patchwork & Quilting Vol 19 No 7 I knew I had to make it. Hers was called Waiting for Russell, but I named mine Daisy a Day because to me it looked like a carpet of daisies.  It’s also traditionally been known as Tea Leaves, Lafayette Orange Peel and Lover’s Knot.

There’s something about those petal shapes and the round, secondary patterns that’s just a delight to look at, and the idea of a pieced version of this classic Orange Peel shape rather than the popular applique version really appealed to me.

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For my background I used a white-on-white spot, and then I hit my humungous scrap bag for some of the brightest, happiest fabrics I could find for the “petals” – Kaffe Fassett brights, jazzy stripes, dots, florals, even geometrics. In they went!

I used a 12 inch Tea Leaves template by Ardco, which I bought here. The rough, grippy underside made cutting the shapes easy on my sandpaper board.

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It took me just 18 months to make the quilt top and I loved every minute of this journey. It lifted the spirits to look at these pretties every day!

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The decision to hand- rather than machine-quilt was an easy one. I wanted my quilt to have a soft texture with the quilting visible, so I quilted in the white spaces 1/4 inch inside the seams.

With so many pieces to quilt I was worried I could easily miss one (or ten!) so I pinned every white space with a safety pin, counting them as I went. Then it was simply a matter of pulling out the pins as I went and, so that I could see my progress, I marked off the pins on a card as I went.

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Amazingly it only took me 5 weeks to hand quilt this queen sized bed quilt.

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With such a riot of colour in the petals I could have used just about any shade for the binding, but as usual bright pink called to me the loudest!

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Stats:
88 in x 96 in (approx)
Daisy petals - Kaffe Fassett brights, along with other bright, modern scraps.
Background fabric - White tone-on-tone spot from the Polka Party III range by Holly Holderman for Lakehouse Drygoods
Warm & White Cotton batting.
Pieced and quilted by me by hand using Aurifil 40 weight thread in white (2024).

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Now off you go and enjoy all the other quilts in this fun Bloggers’ Quilt Festival for Spring 2013. The Bed Quilt category is here but there are plenty of other categories too.

Pick your favourites because next week you’ll be able to cast your vote for the best quilt in each category as well as Viewers’ Choice. And you can win for just leaving a comment on Amy’s blog.

Go on. You can do it while you drink your cuppa, and you won’t get sore feet looking at the exhibits Winking smile.

Red roseDi

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53 comments:

  1. Beautiful orange peel - so lovely!

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  2. Be still my heart!!
    I made a Joseph's Coat of Many Colors, in green, and hand quilted it, years ago. This, in the inks, is just spectacular! Thank you for sharing!

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  3. That's such a lovely quilt! Remember the old song "I'll give you a daisy a day, dear"?

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  4. Incredible...and until I read about it I had thought it was appliqued and not pieced!

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  5. This is just stunning! I love all of the bright, happy colors.
    Such a great deal of work went into this . . . I can't even imagine!

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  6. Wow--you really know how to manage scraps!

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  7. I'm very tempted to make an Orange peel Quilt. Lovely work.

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  8. It's stunning. I made four orange peel blocks earlier this year for the first time and swore never again! I can't believe you made a queen size quilt using those petals. It's astoundingly beautiful - enough to tempt me into considering the block again. I love your scalloped edges bound in pink, though it's really impossible to have a favourite part of this quilt. So beautiful!

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  9. Wow, what dedication, it's beautiful!

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  10. This is absolutely gorgeous! I love the scalloped edges, and all the KF fabric! Hand quilting it must have been a dream, and I would have liked to see more photos of the quilting! Great entry into the festival. Good luck!

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  11. Beautiful quilt! I have a 2/3 finished applique version you have inspired me to finish!

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  12. Gorgeous quilt! Beautifully done.

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  13. Oh my! That's simply beautiful Di! I've been itching to do something like this! Gorgeous work!

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  14. Love this quilt! Just beautiful!

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  15. Awesome!!! Your quilt is beautiful, I have wanted to make this pattern for a long time and your quilt has inspired me..

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  16. Awesome!!! Your quilt is beautiful, I have wanted to make this pattern for a long time and your quilt has inspired me..

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  17. Absolutely beautiful. Thanks for sharing insot.comights on the templates too!

    SewCalGal
    www.sewcalgal.blogsp

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  18. Oh my gosh, this is truly stunning! I have no idea how you combined all of the sewn petals and triangle middles into the quilt tip without losing your mind. Congratulations on a really impressive quilt - I just love it!

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  19. Good for you to be entering this quilt Di! It's definitely worthy of a big prize. So colorful. And a long-suffering piece to make, as I know! Your quilt and the photography of it are both spectacular. All the best for winning.

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  20. Your quilt is so colourful it would cheer up the saddest day. I can not imagine hand quilting it in 5 weeks. Well done.

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  21. Your quilt is so colourful, it would cheer up the saddest day. I can not imagine hand quilting around all the orange peel shapes in five weeks. Well Done.

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  22. I love this quilt so much! I'm going to get out my ARDCO template that I won (from you) and revisit it....could I really do this? FABULOUS....and a winner in my book!

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  23. I love your quilt, Di. It is just sew beautiful. Love the pieced curves especially. And, of course, all those wonderful colours!

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  24. Gorgeous work! I can't believe you hand quilted the whole thing in only 5 weeks. Wow! Those templates with the grippy bottom look awesome. Thanks so much for sharing!

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  25. This quilt is gorgeous and cheerful!

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  26. Your quilt jumped out at me from the linky page and I am so glad I dropped by to read about it - such amazing piecing, I also assumed applique. Well done and good luck.

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  27. Anyone who has the patience to hand quilt amazes me. I once took about 5 year of on and off again work to hand quilt a piece because I was so daunted by the task -- it was a table runner :-)

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  28. This is gorgeous! So impressed by the work on it. Thanks!

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  29. Di, it's amazingly beautiful!

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  30. It's gorgeous Di, I love all the bright colours and the wonderful curved shapes. There's nothing like some hand quilting to add beauty, love and softness to a quilt.

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  31. Your quilt is gorgeous! The colors and layout are so awesome, really stunning!

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  32. I love this! Amazing Orange Peel and Wow it is pieced and handquilted! What a treasure! Good Luck!

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  33. This has to be one of the most beautiful quilts ever made!! I just love it so much. And hand quilted too. Absolutely beautiful.

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  34. It's just so beautiful! I can't believe you made this so fast! You've got my vote for bed and 'overall"! Good luck!

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  35. Such a gorgeous quilt! Best of luck in the Festival!

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  36. Oh my gosh, this is STUNNING! So bright, happy and colourful. It is a work of art, so beautiful.

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  37. This is an amazing quilt! Such a hard work! Congratulations it looks gorgeous!

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  38. This quilt is fantastic.
    Greetings from Germany, Grit

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  39. Absolutely beautiful!!! I love all the colors and the fact that you hand quilted it amazes me. I love Kaffe fabrics too and your quilt is inspiring me to give this one a try. Definitely my vote for viewer's choice.

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  40. Di, I meant to tell you on Facebook, and never got around to it, but this quilt is GOR-JUS! It makes me smile with all of those lovely colours. Do you need to have hand replacement surgery now?!

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  41. Oh how stunning! It was worth every second you spent on it! I would love to see pictures of it on a bed, though it had a really nice tour outside!

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  42. Congratulations on winning one of the viewer's choice awards. Your quilt is fantastic! I just wrote about it on my blog. I was one of the winners, too :-)

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  43. Beautiful quilt! It is so nice to read the process of the making, I am so tempted to have a look at my huge scraps bag and give it a go, it is wasn't for the amount of UFO's that I have to complete!.

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  44. Congratulations on your winning quilt, Di! You have an amazing patience for piecing and quilting by hand. I love the bright fabrics you used.

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  45. Beautiful quilt! What an inspiration!It makes me think that maybe I could make something like this too!

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  46. Congratulations on your Viewer Choice Award..This quilt is just beautiful and I would have voted for it to get First Place!!!

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  47. Congratulations on being one of the winners from the viewwer's choice. A well deserved prize!

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  48. Congrats on your beautiful quilt--one of my very favorites!

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