apple cake quilt

Merry day after Christmas! I hope all of you had a wonderful holiday. We enjoyed some quiet time home (just the five of us) and we also spent some time with friends. It was lovely and fairly relaxing, which is quite a feat with 3 young children! ;)

Today I am so happy to share my apple cake quilt with you! I started it in the spring of 2010. When I started this quilt, I wanted to stretch my quilting skills and I also wanted a portable project to work on while I hung out with the kids over the summer. This is my first foray into hand applique (you can read my thoughts about it here) and I'm glad to have the experience under my belt. I enjoyed applique very much!

The other way I challenged myself was to NOT rely on solid white for the background squares. Once I got out of my box, I LOVED using print on print and working with light and dark values. It gives so much depth to this quilt! I have plans to do that more often. It's a very good way to reduce the stash.

 The backing is asymmetrical, which wasn't my first choice, but in the end I kind of ended up liking it.

I hand quilted the whole thing, which was also a stretch for me. I think I only hand quilted one other quilt ever. I'm still not very good at it, but I love the results.

I love how delicate the hand quilting looks on the white portion of the back. The white also hides uneven stitches very well. :)

I used bliss dots to bind it. I hand stitched down the binding on this one. It was odd to do that after machine binding so many quilts. I was surprised that I didn't really miss the process all that much. It's funny, because hand stitching the binding used to be one of my favorite parts of quilting. Maybe I got my fill of gazing at the quilt during the hand quilting process instead?!

I think I took about 60+ photos of it. I am so, so thrilled with this quilt. I've been snuggling under it every chance I get.

It measures 56" x 70".

Happy Monday to you!