A Wedding Quilt by Dan

A bit ago Dan from Piece and Press linked up to Fabric Tuesday.  When I went back to check out the link I was having so much fun seeing his things, he just has a fresh, modern and urban take on quilting, I found myself quite intrigued!  He's self-described as designing gardens and sewing quilts.  Sounds fun!  Here's his Wedding Quilt:

We just gave this quilt to some good friends for their wedding. The pattern is 'Sexy Hexy' available for free from Amy Butler. It was a lot of fun to make and I enjoyed working with the bold bright prints. It was also my first experience working with glue stick - the center hexagons are stabilized with freezer paper, the seam allowances glue sticked to the back of the paper, and then top stitched to the already assembled outer rings of the hexagon. It made the tricky business of matching the corners very easy.

The biggest challenge on this project was completely self imposed. I fussy cut all the hexagon sides (except the columbine and lindy leaf, if memory serves) for maximum kaleidoscope effect. That's a lot of fussing! But I'm glad I did it.

The pieced back is a calmer palette of two blue fabrics.

I ran with the floral theme for the quilting. It's a free motion loopy daisy pattern (photo by Stacey Sharman).

The quilt is finished with a hand-embroidered label attached to the corner binding on the back of the blanket (photo by Stacey Sharman).

Fabrics:
Lindy Leaf, Pocketbook  and Welcome Road by Heather Bailey for Free Spirit
Sunflower, Flower Fields and Columbine by Joel Dewberry for Free Spirit
Bubble Burst by Anna Maria Horner for Free Spirit
Lotus Pond by Amy Butler for Free Spirit
Sophie's Garden by Erin McMorris for Free Spirit
Posh Petals by Khristian Howell for Anthology Fabrics
Mod Trees by Giancini Atelier for Anthology Fabrics

Calypso Swing Quilt

Today I've got the first Quilt Story for the year 2011, yahoo!!  One of our new readers, Cara from The Official Mark Cesarik Fabric Fansite, sent us a link to her first quilt (seriously so many people make amazing first quilts!).  Not only is it her first, not only did the design it herself, but her fiance is the designer of the fabric!!  Talk about a match!  Here's Cara:

I finished my first quilt last night! I really love how it turned out. Quilting is addicting - I think I'm hooked. I fell even more in love with Calypso Swing through making this quilt. The designs looks really great together if I may say so myself... I'm trying to convince Mark he should started quilting but he doesn't want to. Oh well - more fabric for me

The back of the quilt is just large rectangles of fabric pieced together. Next time I want to do something a little more fun for the back.

I designed the quilt to show off the fabric "Shuffle" and hand-quilted to emphasize the circular pattern.

Along the rest of the quilt, I hand-quilted circles.

Thank you for all of your help and suggestions with binding. I actually really ended up enjoying the process of sewing the binding onto the quilt. My mitered corners could use a little help, but I'm sure I'll get better with each quilt.

If anyone is interested in the pattern for this quilt, I am happy to write a tutorial. Just leave a comment to let me know. Thanks for looking!