Book Quilts: Field Day & Small Town Girl

Now when it's this time of year in Northeast Ohio, I find myself making the most colorful quilts of the year. Why you ask? This is why:

 Usually, this time of year there is next to zero color outside. And if you're wondering, yes, this was Lake Erie frozen over a couple years ago. I haven't been up to the lake lately, but last year our winter was so mild it never got close to this.

So that's why I find myself making quilts bursting in color and Field Day is no exception. Now, following in the concept of the book, this relatively large quilt uses precuts, probably just not the one you're thinking of! Any guesses? Well, this quilt actually uses a charm pack and just some additional yardage.

Copyrighted Image provided by Martingale, Brent Kane, photographer 

This quilt was super fun to make and super quick. The fabrics I used were designed by the one and only Kate Spain, this was her Terrain line. I did blend in a fabric from Me & My Sister for the white polka dot, but the fabrics worked so well I couldn't resist.

You really can't see it in this picture, but you'll be able to in the book because the pictures are AMAZING! I had a little fun while quilting Field Day, I decided to use both custom machine quilting AND utility quilting. The results are incredible and I have mixed quilting techniques on other quilts since I first tried it on this one.

Copyrighted Image provided by Martingale, Brent Kane, photographer 

And here we have Small Town Girl. Small Town Girl is not small at all, actually she's one of the larger quilts in the book. When I designed this quilt, it was one of those instances where everything fell into place perfectly, almost. I had this design drawn up eons ago it feels like but it wasn't working. I rediscovered it while I was working on the book and had an idea which developed into the quilt above. The best part was I already had a fat eighth bundle of Ruby by Bonnie & Camille sitting at home that was perfect for this design.

If the background looks a but dark, that's because I had to search and find the perfect print to go with this quilt. I was thinking about using a solid white, but I wanted something different. In the Ruby line, there was this teeny tiny gray dot that I knew I just needed. After a few minutes on the Internet and it was being shipped to my house and it looks so much better in person than in photos. It really makes the bright colors of the rest of the Ruby line pop.

Two more quilts down, a few more to go! I'll be showing quilts from the book through the weekend up until Tuesday when the book is released! Yippee!

So which quilt do you like the best so far? Inquiring minds would like to know :) Toodles!

Machine Quilting - Mixing Techniques

Here's the other Rapid Fire Hunter Star that we have as a sample at Cottonpickers.

 This was made with a mix of Jo Morton's fabrics, but it mainly used her Ember Reds and Evergreens line for the colors. This is the 5" block using the Studio 180 Rapid Fire Hunter Star Ruler.

 First I machine quilted the top but I left the stars alone until after I unloaded the quilt. (I've done this a couple other times and I love this new technique) Once I got the mostly quilted project home I used some Pearl Cotton and utility quilted in the stars.

 I'm very proud of myself as I try to build my quilting skills and these were the first border feathers I've ever done! They were so much fun to do!

You can see more detail of the utility quilting here and the dense meandering I did in the rest of the block with the machine.

Combining these techniques are fun and add another dimension to the quilt that would not be able to be had otherwise. This is definitely something I would encourage you to try, but you'll have to discuss it with your machine quilter beforehand. They would most likely do the machine quilting and you would then have to do the utility quilting (and yes I would do it in that order).

Have you ever seen this before? What do you think? Let me know! Don't forget, new patterns should be premiering very soon!