Lines by Design blog hop

Today I'm happy to be a stop on my friend Debbie's blog tour for her new book, Lines by Design Quilts. This book is so true to Debbie's clean, graphic and straightforward style. The book contains 17 fun projects--in various sizes--to sew and inspire. It's a beautiful book!
The bar chart quilt caught my eye immediately. I've thought about making something similar to this for a long time, but I never had enough vision to follow through. For that reason, I was more than happy to give this pattern a try. It's much better than I could have done on my own!

I've had this red jelly roll in my stash for years, so I was thrilled to finally have a reason to sew it up! I pulled various fabrics from my stash to round things out. I am not good at following directions, or counting, apparently, so I had to add an additional fabric to the mix about half way though....but that's pretty typical for me! Ha!

Sewing with jelly rolls is messy. Yikes! I bet I will be vacuuming up red fuzz for the rest of the year...but it was totally worth it. I LOVE how the quilt turned out. LOVE it!

I was worried that some of the darker red prints that I pulled would blend into the background too much, but I think it turned out to be the perfect balance. Hurray! (And phew!)

When it came time to quilt it, I decided to do a small stipple in the background. I quilted loopy L's in the printed strips. I also changed thread colors for the strips: some were quilted in red thread, some were quilted in white thread. It required me to bury quite a few knots, but it was time well spent. I love how the stippling unifies the background strips. This quilt will be texture-iffic once it is washed!

The ovals print (on the left) was the last minute addition to the quilt. I'm glad I had to add one more fabric, because it introduced another scale of print to the quilt. It needed it!

It has been awhile since I machine bound a quilt, but this one was a good candidate for it! 3 out of the 4 corners turned out beautifully. I suppose that's the best I could ask for. :)

The backing was a very deliberate choice. I wanted something that would camouflage both the red and white threads. This definitely did the trick! (The backing, binding, ovals and one of the red polka dot fabrics are all from my good neighbors fabric line.)

The finished quilt is about 60" x 78" or so. I was tempted to make a few of those strips scrappy, but I resisted. Aren't you surprised? :) Red is a bold choice for the background, but I couldn't love it any more. I need to go bold more often!

(The red background fabric is Moda Bella Solid (9900-JR 16).)

Since this is a blog hop, Debbie and her publisher are giving away a copy of the book to one of my readers! If you would like to win, please leave me a comment in this post. In your comment, I would love to hear what color of fabric is most prominent in your stash. (Is it because you always use it? Or is it because you never use it?) The contest is open to everyone! A hard copy will be sent to a US resident OR a digital copy will be sent to a resident outside of the US. I will pick a winner in a few days!

 

Oh! And feel free to visit the other stops on the blog tour to see more of the book:

 

Wed, Mar 2     Christa Watson     http://christaquilts.com     

Th, Mar 3        Casey York      https://studioloblog.wordpress.com/

Fri, Mar 4        Heather Jones http://www.heatherjonesstudio.com/blog/

Mon, Mar 7     Kate Colleran  http://seamslikeadream.com/blog/

Tues, Mar 8     Rossie Hutchinson      http://www.rossiecrafts.com/blog

Wed, Mar 9     Amanda Jean Nyberg http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/

Th, Mar 10      Amy Ellis         http://www.amyscreativeside.com/blog/

Fri, Mar 11      Lynn Krawczyk            http://smudgeddesignstudio.com/blog/

Mon, Mar 14   Debbie Grifka  http://eschhousequilts.com/blog