I love NY quilt from Quilt Candy...

Sarah from Quilt Candy submitted this awesome modern I heart NY quilt. Sarah has a lot of fun quilt finishes here. She also sells quilts and buntings here, cute stuff. We are so happy Sarah shared her neat quilt with us. What a fun modern quilt with unique fabrics. Love it!

I was pottering about the kitchen one morning when I heard a load 'thud' of mail land on the floor.  Nothing unusual, as I'm no stranger to ordering fabric online :-)  But there was an unfamiliar looking package addressed to me and I was pretty sure I hadn't ordered anything recently...

I opened it up and this was inside...

Wow!  So much gorgeous fabric, featuring New York Skylines, a map of the Subway and a wonderful multicoloured illustrated map.  I knew immediately who it was from...my wonderful blogging friend Chrissie, who lives in New York! 

I was completely overwhelmed by her generosity and totally in love with these gorgeous fabrics, which I soon learnt were from a design collection made exclusively for The City Quilter, the Mecca of quilting shops in New York.  After much stroking and admiring, it suddenly dawned on me – I was going to have to make something with them, and it had to be fabulous – oh the pressure!

I am lucky enough to say I've been to New York before.  It was back in 2004, with my mum, for 5 days.  We did all the sights; Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Times Square, Central Park, Bloomingdales, Macy's, Broadway, you name it.  And despite the rain and the cold (oh my goodness, I have never been so cold!) I can genuinely say that I did love New York.  So this was the inspiration for my quilt.

The design I had in mind needed a little more of the white fabric, so I found myself on the City Quilter website, where I came across a wonderful New York Times print, that was an off white, and worked  perfectly with the black on white city scape print for the background of my quilt. 

I loved the idea of a text quilt with text print, so I chose to write the words 'I Heart NY' in squares.  The writing was made up of the subway print and the white on back skyline print.  I think the heart is my favourite bit of all.

For the backing, Chrissie very generously supplied me with several metres (or should I say yards) of this wonderful illustrated map of New York print.

 

I just love how the colours are such a wonderful contrast compared with the black and white front of the quilt. 

The colours of the map are just fantastic, and there's so much detail to pour over. It makes it practically a double sided quilt!

Can you see the quilting?  I opted for ½ inch either side of the seam lines, both vertically and horizontally.  I wanted it to be linear, to represent the grid like formation of the streets and avenues of NYC.  My goodness my mum and I had fun navigating those while we were there! 

Finally, I used some of the black skyline print to bind the quilt. 

And then I was posed with another challenge.  I needed to photograph the quilt.  But I don't live in New York.  I live on a tiny island, surrounded by views like this;

And it didn't seem right to photograph my NY quilt against the skyline of the (very small) local town.  That would be false advertising! 

So an empty car park was the most fitting option.  Grey, concrete and linear. 

And blowing a gale and freezing cold!

This is a truly special quilt for me.  Now I can wrap myself in it, and think of my wonderful friendship with Chrissie, and how we have got to know one another and shared so much. Thank you so much for such a generous gift Chrissie, it means the world to me!  Hopefully it will only be a matter of time before I head to New York again so that we can finally meet, and I'll be taking my quilt with me :-) 

Sarah x