Bloggers' Quilt Festival: Spring Edition

I love the Bloggers' Quilt Festival that Amy hosts each Spring and Fall. It's an opportunity to check out so many beautiful quilts and be inspired all over again!

I've decided to showcase my Be Yourself quilt. The name comes from an Oscar Wilde quote: "Be yourself. Everyone else is taken."

I made this quilt for my daughter earlier this year. The project actually started ages ago when I bought a charm pack and some yardage of Authentic fabric. I knew I wanted to make the OnlyChild a quilt with it, but I didn't see a pattern I really liked.

I started off with the plan of making some kind of Chinese Coins quilt. I carefully cut the charm squares in half and sewed them together in long strips.

Then I stalled. It just wasn't what I wanted to do. I put it away to percolate for a while. A long while.

When it came out of hiding, I envisioned something entirely different for this quilt. I was inspired by some square-in-square designs I had seen around the internet but I didn't want it to be too even and monotonous looking so this is what I ended up designing.

The quilting is completely straight-line all across in one direction. I didn't worry too much about perfectly even lines; I just used the walking foot on my sewing machine as a guide and reoriented my stitching at every long seam. I'd seen this quilting technique on lots of projects but I'd never tried it before. It worked out great and looks pretty cool.

My daughter loves this quilt. It's not too girly (the last one I made her had a lot of purple in it) and will fit with any decor so when (if) she moves into her own place, she can use it as a throw in the living room without it looking like a little girl's bed quilt.

If you want to see more of the Bloggers' Quilt Festival line-up, head over to Amy's Creative Side.