I’ve been quilting for two years now and an absolute favourite of mine has been the twice yearly quilters’ blog festival.  This is a virtual quilt show where bloggers can enter two quilts under various categories. It’s run by Amy of Amyscreativeside

Running the festival must be a vast undertaking – marshalling categories, organising voting and then finding prizes for winners but Amy seems to blend this in with everything else she does. It’s a well oiled machine I tell you. But of course the real fun is seeing everyone’s quilts, finding out how the voting goes (its not easy to call at all!) and that wonderful inspiration and eye candy all in one place. Just great fun.

In fact this year Amy changed things up to reflect the fact that there are fewer bloggers and more Instagrammers so the Spring festival went on Instagram and there was a wonderful response. But the autumn is just for bloggers which means you get the eye candy but also the background to the quilts and its construction. It’s well worth a view particularly when all the quilts have linked in which is at the end of this week.

Ah so which quilt to chose and then which category?  I’m still agonising about my second quilt but my first entry is this sumptuous  red quilt, all mine and very warm it is too. The obvious category is large quilt and at 75″ by 85″, it’s certainly on the larger side.

I’ve blogged about it here but you may recognise this as the Urban Candy Quilt by Sew Kind of Wonderful.  I wanted a scrappy look so picked out just about every warm toned fabric I possessed and then was understandably compelled to buy a few more…. I was after more prints and fancied some of the warm small scale prints of Denyse Scmidt’s older ranges so the search was on.

Using the Quick Curve Ruler really lived up to its name. In no time did I have a mound of warm toned pieces and the corresponding plain Kona Oyster. The sewing was easy too but the trimming…..that was more tricksy. If the quilt was to be gifted I’d have resewn a fair few but perfection isn’t my bag.

It took a fair bit of trial and error to get the right mix of prints depending on scale, colour and tone but we got there. The quilting was a relatively easy on my Pfaff 4.2. and I used the forgiving  ‘loop the loop’.

But my main requirement was that it would be warm and cosy and big enough. It’s getting chilly here in the UK and I wanted one that was more than just a token quilt like a bed runner. It’s an ample size for me  and best of all with a wool batting and cosy flannel backing it’s lovely and warm. Just what I wanted.

Do pop by the festival, I know it’s only the first day but there are already some stunning quilts. If you go down towards the bottom of this post the categories in the grey boxes take you straight to the quilts in that section of the festival. Enjoy!