The "Green and Orange" Quilt

In 2015, the quilt guild I am apart of did a block of the month for the Quilters Digest magazine.

I was feeling kind of stuck, and not confident in my color choices, so I had my husband, Will, pick them out for me. So since then it has been dubbed as HIS quilt as it was definitely not colors I would have otherwise picked out.

Well, I kept up with the group and made all the blocks. Some were definitely harder than others. But I learned some cool skills, like fussy cutting, working with tiny pieces, and organizing my pieces to keep them straight.

Each block was so cool and different.

Making the border was an interesting experience. With the blocks on point, I had to deal with bias stretch and sewing with the angles. But I love the way it turned out.

After I got the top all put together, the project got put on hold for a year while I worked on other things like Christmas presents.  But my husband would admire each project I would do and then ask when I was going to work on his quilt.

At the beginning of 2017 I decided I need to finish my unfinished business.  So I got it all pinned together and worked on how I was going to quilt it. I wasn't a fan of the way the magazine had it quilted but I wanted to quilt it in a way that would show off the piecing. It took a few weeks but I finally figured it out

While this was all happening, I got a flier for a local art show. I had entered a couple of small quilts into this show before, but nothing big. I decided I wanted to enter this quilt. It was the best piecing I had ever done, and so I worked really hard to make sure my quilting was awesome too.

After I picked out a fabric I wanted to bind it with, I tried a more professional method to get my mitered corners more square. I also hand sewed the binding. The first I had ever done so on anything bigger than a wall hanging.

Here it is getting blocked. Another first for me.

And it is finished!
Here it is hanging up at the art show. By happenstance, I arrived to take this picture when they were doing the awards ceremony. I figured I would stay and see who won because there was a few of the ladies from quilt guild that had entered quilts, and they always won.

I was very surprised when they called my name!

Honorable Mention in the Machine Quilting category. I am so happy!