Blogger’s Quilt Festival–Modern quilt entry

I’m late to the party again, but still in time to enter a couple of quilts in the online Blogger’s Quilt Festival. This time I’m featuring Sparkling Strings in the Modern Quilts category.  If you follow my blog, you’ve seen this one a few times, but I really like it so here it is again.



I don’t remember ever finishing a quilt as quickly as I did this one. Someone I know suffered a stroke just before Christmas.  Her family was well taken care of and didn’t want any more help for cooking and laundry and such but I really wanted to share something .  I eventually remembered that I’m a quilter and quilter can share quilted hugs and this is what emerged on the design wall.



This was a quilt of “firsts” for me:

• First string quilt – I had just been thinking I was a fool to save all those strings because really, how likely was I to actually use them?  Surprise!  I did use them.  This quilt pretty much depleted my collection, but now I know it’s OK to keep saving them because  will find a use for them eventually.
• First time piecing equilateral triangles – my son gave me a triangle ruler for Christmas just in time to design this quilt.  There will be other triangle designs in my future, I’m sure.
• First time quilting oodles of negative space – this was bit intimidating at first.  I warmed up by quilting lots of lines with the walking foot in the trickier middle sections then took a deep breath and free motion quilted the rest.  This is the most freemotion I’ve ever done on anything larger than a table runner.
• Almost, but not quite a first – I remembered to label this one!

I spent several weeks this winter writing a pattern for Sparkling Strings. I made a non-string version of the layout as I worked through it, and a friend is currently testing the pattern for me.  I can’t wait to see how it looks in her fabric choices.
Thanks for visiting.  Please pop over to the festival blog and enjoy the quilty eye-candy being shared this week.

Update:  The Sparkling Strings pattern is now available in my shop!  Click on the "Pattern Shop" tab above. Also, check out my post about Sparkling Trails, a version of this quilt without the strings.