Bliss pinwheels!

I finished hand sewing the binding on this quilt yesterday afternoon and took it outside for a quick photo shoot just in time to enter it in the Bloggers Quilt Festival hosted by Amy. For those of you who are regular readers you will know all about this quilt but for those who are are visiting from the  Bloggers Quilt Festival I will give you a run-down on its statistics :-) Oh and welcome if you are new here! You welcome to hang around and have a look at what I get up to.

So this quilt was started with a jellyroll of that pretty fabric collection called "Bliss by Bonnie and Camille". The framed 6 inch pinwheel blocks were originally going to be sewn together to make 12 inch blocks but I decided that they looked better framed individually with the coordinating solids. I also added yoyo flowers to each pinwheel.

I then added a wide border in one of the pretty red prints then machine appliqued a meandering vine with clusters of yoyo blossoms. 

Once I finished the top I was a little stuck on how I should quilt it. I love the look of hand quilting but also like simple straight line machine quilting so I did a bit of each. Another problem that stopped the progression of this quilt was trying to find the right shades of Pearl cotton to hand quilt it in but I finally found the right colours after a lot of searching every time I went out of town. (I live in a small coastal town 2 hours drive from any city with a decent amount of shops.) 

The pinwheels are hand quilted with circles of Pearle thread and quilting cotton to give the idea of a spinning pinwheel. 

The border is hand quilted using the Pearl thread in a meandering line with little loopy flowers to echo the clusters of yoyo blossoms.

Here's a photo of the back to give you a better idea of the border quilting.

For the straight line quilting I used a variegated thread in shades similar to the fabrics.

I used a solid red to bind it which I think frames it all nicely. I always use a double thickness of binding for better durability.

This quilt, which measures 50"x70", is special to me because it's the first quilt I've made specifically to sell in my shop and also it's the first quilt I've made using just one fabric collection. I love how it turned out and would be quite happy to keep it if it doesn't sell. When I made the initial pinwheel blocks I ended up with too many so have made another quilt top (crib size and waiting to be quilted) plus a bolster pillow to match the quilt. 

I do hope you enjoyed reading about the makings of this quilt and thanks to Amy for hosting this fun Bloggers Quilt Festival. I'm off to check everyone elses entries now!