The quilt I am going to share with you is one that I finished up in the last month or so and is a group quilt. The picture below shows a little preview.
It started way last summer as some leftovers from the Opportunity Quilt our guild was making for the 2013 year. The opportunity quilt was a string spiderweb quilt designed by Lorraine Olsen with a vintage air – including the yellow background and the vintage local feed sacks for backing. The photo below shows “The Piecemakers’ Web”, our 2013 Opportunity quilt which was juried into Paducah in the group category this spring.
Everyone in the guild had a chance to take home a sheet of 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper with three wedges printed on it for the spider webs or a section for the string-pieced border. They were to paper piece strings of fabric across those three wedges and then bring the whole sheet back to the guild. Members of the committee cut the wedges and pieced the final quilt. There were tons of leftover paper pieced strips from the main quilt and people were encouraged to take them and make something else that would benefit the guild.
I took two finished webs already pieced with yellow background and enough papers and wedges to make a small quilt with borders. The design was determined by what left overs I brought home. I came up with the layout for the seven spider webs and actually used some of the border strip sheets from the main quilt to cut more wedges for the center spider webs and the borders. I added coping strips to the inner part of the quilt to make it a decent sized lap quilt. We didn’t have much of the yellow fabric left, so I ordered more of the yellow and picked out narrow border and binding fabric as well as the backing fabric. Finished size is 55″ by 67″.
Here is my finished quilt. It is so bright and cheerful!
I absolutely LOVE this quilt even though this much yellow is not normally a favorite of mine. The Hunter even REALLY likes this quilt! (Believe me, that is very high praise coming from him!)
All the quilting designs are my own. I wanted feathers on the quilt and doodled for quite a while before coming up with the final designs.
I fell in love with this fun red and white print that I picked out for the binding and the border.
The picture above shows some of the quilting inside the border. I wanted the corner sections to be almost like a flower-pot or vase spilling feathers out all over the quilt.
This picture shows the feathers in the center section of the quilt. The design deep in between the spider webs on this part echoes the designs in the center stars.
These center star areas were not the easiest things to fit feathers into, but I really like the way they turned out.
It is so much fun to look at the strings in this quilt. See that wavy, bright-colored stripe at the top of this block? That wedge is one of mine. 
Other fabrics I recognize as belonging to friends. See the wedge at three o’clock in the picture above? All those teeny-tiny, narrow strings belong to Peggy. (Sorry for the different colors – these two photos were taken inside and all the others were taken outside).
I adore the texture the quilting gives to this quilt!
I quilted it on my Gammill longarm and used two layers of batting, Quilter’s Dream Blend and Hobbs PolyDown. I really wanted the quilting to show in those wide open areas. Have I said I love this quilt? 
The only thing I don’t like about this quilt is that it is not mine to keep! 
This quilt will be given to the member of the guild that sells the winning ticket to the big donation quilt, “The Piecemakers’ Web”, as incentive to sell more tickets. We write our names on the back of any tickets we sell and if the name of someone I have sold a ticket to is drawn to win the big quilt, I win this one. Anyone want to buy a ticket to the big quilt?!!!! 
The more I sell the more likely I am to win this beauty back!
So, there is my entry to the Group/Bee Quilt division of The Bloggers Quilt Festival. Get yourself a cuppa, a comfortable chair, and head on over to Amy’s Creative Side and see the other incredible entries! Don’t forget to vote for your favorite in each of the categories and also visit the many wonderful, generous sponsors of the Festival!
When Bonnie Hunter announced last winter’s mystery, Easy Street, I loved the colors and decided I would join in. It helped that she said this wouldn’t have the gazillion pieces that previous mysteries had. So I stuck with it and actually got this one finished, quilted and bound!
Nothing fancy. Not a prize winner or show quilt, but definitely a winner in my home!
