Blogger's Quilt Festival: Rainbow Sherbet Snowball Quilt

In the crazy quilt of life, I'm glad you're in my block of friends.
–Unknown

Now, on to the really important stuff. I chose my Rainbow Sherbet Snowball Quilt to share for the Blogger's Quilt Festival. This quilt was a journey for me; it was the first quilt I did from start to finish — the first quilt I machine quilted. Well, not counting the table runner. Or the Wedding Ring Wall Hanging. Or the scripture covers . Those were all small projects with the walking foot, though. Practice. Warming up. This was the first actual quilt-size project with real free-motion quilting that I did {instead of taking it to professional}.

I started out loving this quilt. I pulled the fabrics for the snowballs from my stash {which was a revelation because I consider my stash to be pretty small and certainly not developed or diversified enough to make a whole quilt}. And I bought the white-on-ivory background fabric at 50% off {getting a good deal is one of my absolute most favorite things; the out-of-pocket cost for the background, backing, binding and batting was $16.30. It doesn't get better than that!}. The colors were so bright and cheerful that I decided to make two quilts; one for me and one to give to my youngest sister as a wedding gift. But after I got the top together I didn't like it as much. Thanks to some kind encouragement from the blogishpere, I pushed ahead hoping that I'd love the quilt again when it was finished.

But then came the scary part — the free-motion quilting. By me. A complete novice. My intention when I started this quilt was to do it myself. All along I planned to do a stipple {or meander} but my practice attempts were pretty craptastic and when it came time to actually commit needle and thread to fabric I was, to say the least, a little intimidated and found myself wishing to take it to a machine quilter. Again with the encouragement of some excellent bloggersI dove in. It didn't take too long for me to get into a groove and some of the quilting actually came out pretty nicely. This is a section that I am particularly fond of {if you click on the picture you can see the quilting better}. And once the quilt was quilted and washed and bumpy and wrinkly and soft, I did love it again.

One of my favorite parts was the baby snowballs on the back. I saved the corners I cut away from the snowball blocks and made them into half-square triangles. Then I sewed them all together to make baby snowballs. While I was working on it, I wondered if it was really worth my time, but as it turned out, they were completely adorable and perfect.

The artsy pictures are fun and interesting to look at, but I always find myself wanting to see the whole thing, so for those of you who are like me, I've got your back. Thanks for stopping by.