Original Design Quilt Entry for the Blogger's Quilt Festival

I'm excited to enter Amy Ellis's 2016 Blogger's Quilt Festival at AmysCreativeSide.com again this year. Amy puts on a great Festival--so many beautiful things to look at--thanks so much, Amy, for organizing it.

My entry in the Original Design Quilt category is a quilt I call String Crossroads. It is an original design combining traditional elements.

String Crossroads

String Crossroads (detail)

String Crossroads (detail)

String Crossroads (backing and binding detail)

I used a huge variety of fabrics in this one--traditional, modern, and novelty. The crossroads blocks were made with a constant cream-colored fabric. The quilt measures 82' x 98", and I quilted it on my domestic sewing machine.

I have written instructions (not a formal pattern) for this quilt. They are available on my blog at http://theeclecticabuela.blogspot.com/p/string-crossing-pattern.html . If you should make one--I'd love to see it!


Thanks for looking at my entry.
 

String Crossroads Instructions

For those who were interested, here are the instructions of making the String Crossroads quilt that I designed.

The instructions are not an exhaustive pattern; they are more about the numbers and sizes of blocks needed for the quilt.

There is also a link to the instructions in the right-hand sidebar of the main blog page.

Thanks for your interest. If you make this, I'd love to see your version.

I'm linking with Fiber Tuesday 71 at The Quilting Room with Mel and Jo's Country Junction UFO Challenge.



 

String Crossroads

I designed a quilt.

I always feel presumptuous when I think or say that, since this quilt is made of very traditional elements. However, I looked around online for quite a while, and I didn't see another just like it, so there it is--I designed a quilt.

This quilt takes elements of the traditional Arkansas Crossroads and combines it with my love of string blocks.

As you can see, I replaced the sixteen patch blocks with string blocks arranged in an X to mimic the shape in the crossroads blocks.


Here are some closer pictures (and you can see that I couldn't refrain from sticking in some fun fabrics!).

Chickens!

A jungle face and a hint of the Cardinals MLB fabric

A red onion (doesn't everyone need a quilt with an onion on it?)

Elephants (at least parts of them)

Another jungle face

I backed it with a beige and brown print, and I quilted it with an all-over meander. A bright red binding finished it off. The size is 82" x 98" (and it was a wrestling match to quilt one that large on my DSM [Domestic Sewing Machine]), but it was worth it to be able to say I did it all--from design to piecing to quilting to binding myself!

I'm hoping to write a pattern for this, but I've never done that before! We'll see how it turns out. I'll offer it for free here on the blog when/if I get it together.

Yes, I designed a quilt!


I'm linking with Jo's Country Junction UFO Challenge and Fiber Tuesday 65 at The Quilting Room with Mel.