Radiance Quilt

Thank you all for your kind and thoughtful comments on my last post! I'm working on going through and responding to each one - it ended up being very constructive for me to share with you all. I'm organizing all of my tribal quilts/projects on one page for easier viewing and referencing, if you would like to check them out all at once! Click here for the Tribal Collection.

Now, moving onto my next Tribal Collection project to share with you all: Radiance.

This is a baby quilt that I made with a stack of AMH true colors + a rainbow stack, all fat quarters. I rarely use more than a few print fabrics in a single quilt, so this was definitely different for me (though perhaps more mainstream in that way?). Scrappy quilting is NOT my strong suit, so I relied heavily on my other strengths (like ombre!) to carry me on this one! I think it's a solid quilt - very easy, light, and fun. It's design is simple yet enjoyably interesting. At the same time, I would not consider this a deep or significant quilt in that it doesn't give the viewer as much to think about as a quilt like Fire & Ice does. "Significant" or not, I quite like it, and think it gave me a bit of respite in the area of design - not every work ought to be the finale piece, you know?

This quilt finishes at 48" x 52", and you can find the pattern for it in the winter 2016 issue of Modern Patchwork magazine (eek! my first pattern ever in there!). Also included is a skillbuilder article I wrote about the absolute basics of paper piecing - just in case it's not your thing (yet).

I used this quilt as a sample for a free-motion quilting workshop I taught up in Canada last year. I blended together a ton of FMQing patterns for a fantastic changing texture. The natural fiber muslin I used for the cream background fabric hides the quilting a little, which keeps it from overwhelming the quilt top pattern. I quilted straight lines in the triangles, using a 50 weight cream in the light-colored triangles (I believe it was So Fine #402) and a chunky 30-weight cotton in the dark triangles (a Sulky Blendables thread). I actually have an entire quilting tutorial on how to create this kind of blended quilting - it's my most popular post, so head on over if you want to check it out!