Bright Lights - Bloggers Quilt Festival

If you're visiting from the Blogger's Quilt Festival, hello... and thanks for stopping by!

I'm entering my Bright Lights quilt in the festival, and realized I hadn't yet shared it here on the blog. This is the second quilt I've made. Ever. That's right. I made a quilted table runner in 2012-13 (It took a while!), and then this one, so it was very much a learning process for me.  Which, really, every quilt is!

© leiyagami

The design was inspired and made for a 'Modern in the City' challenge organized for the International Quilt Festival show in Chicago last year.  It's loosely based on this photo I found through a Google image search: a blurry image of a city street at night. (Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything more to credit the artist/photographer, other than the copyright info above.) I blocked out some general shapes/sections based on the one-point perspective of the photo, then improvised the piecing using different width strips.

I pieced the top while at a retreat with the the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild in March 2014, just a few days before the deadline. Then I quilted it to emphasize the perspective lines. The fabrics were all from my stash. I didn't really know what I was doing, which made it a fun challenge. I just put it together without thinking about it too much; it felt a little like painting! This was also the first time I needed to bury threads, since my only other quilt was a narrow table runner that I quilted so all the stitching ended at the binding edges. And I attached the binding by machine because I worried I wouldn't finish it in time otherwise. Since then, I've come to love binding by hand, and wouldn't dream of doing it otherwise!

It was fun to see it in the IQF show, along with other quilts created by members of both the Chicago and Naperville Modern Quilt Guilds.  I hope you enjoy seeing it (and all the other quilts!) in the Blogger's Quilt Festival over at Amy's Creative Side.  I'm entering it in the Original Designs category.