Blogger's Quilt Festival: Modern Granny

Yes, it's Blogger's Quilt Festival time!!  This festival is what first introduced me to the world of quilt/fiber art bloggers a few years ago!  Thanks to Amy's Creative Side for hosting such a fun event that just keeps getting bigger and better!

My entry this year is my newly finished "Modern Granny Quilt".  Here's the stats:

Blogger’s Quilt Festival Stats

Finished quilt measures : 60″x 72″

Special techniques used : Modern design, negative space and machine free motion quilting

Quilted by : me (Becky Johnson)

Best Category : Home machine quilted, Bed-sized quilt

I started it back in March, after a local charm square swap at our quilt store in town.  The granny square craze was just starting on-line, so I cut up the charm squares and started making granny squares.  I only had 40 or so charm squares, so originally it was going to become a baby quilt for my sister-in-law, who was pregnant with their second child.

When she miscarried in her second trimester, I put it away while we all adjusted to this loss.

These colors were so different from what I normally use that I had a really hard time finding anything in my stash to go with it, so I decided instead to turn it into a large quilt and use a LOT of negative space.  Here's the finished quilt top.  I finished it up just as summer was hitting, so it got put away again, until this fall.

Over the last few weeks, I've been having a lot of fun quilting it.  The hardest part was coming up with a plan, but I love the way it ultimately turned out.  Most of the quilt designs are from Leah Day's Free Motion Project, and quilted on my home machine.  I like to put my own twist on things, and couldn't resist putting some "@" symbols into the pebbling design, because she is a modern granny after all!

I quilted each color stripe in a unique way, and even added some "echoing" stripes in the corners of the quilt in the red, blue and yellow thread.  The rest I divided up into the spaces between each stripe, and quilted each also in a unique design. 

I had just enough of the red batik fabric to finish it up with the binding.  Here's the back, and a picture of it fresh out of the wash (yes, black fabric attracts a LOT of dust, and lint!!).

Yes, that's my son behind it LOL!  I love that he's tall enough now to hold up such a big quilt.  Usually I do that and the kids take the picture!  Be sure to check out all of the other amazing quilts over at the Blogger's Quilt Festival!