Fall 2017 Bloggers Quilt Festival: Scrappy Tulips

It's time once again for Amy's wonderful Bloggers Quilt Festival! It has a special place in my heart as it's what propelled me to first start lurking on quilt blogs and get interested in the online quilting community. My first entry is Scrappy Tulips, a quilt many have already seen here before.

Scrappy Tulips

Scrappy Tulips was finished up this August, but was started sometime back in 2014! {Not an abnormal lag time between start and finish time around here.} It is one of those quilts that I adore because the paper pieced tulips came straight out of my scrap bin. Oh those sweet little bits of fabric we are always discarding--so many good uses for them! The tulip pattern is out of an older book called 'Quick and Easy Strip Quilting' by Helen Whitson Rose I bought at a guild yard sale. I am always extremely intrigued by the idea of new adaptations or interpretations of old patterns, and this one certainly didn't disappoint.

Scrappy Tulips hanging on the railing

Otherwise, I made the design up as the quilt progressed, picking and choosing fabrics and colors as seemed to work best with the original tulips. Or as the quilt seemed to demand. As you can only imagine, the red/brown stripe being used as a background fabric completely set the tone of the quilt going forward. From there it was mostly a matter of trying to make everything come together without ending up with a circus of colors! It was a very fun quilt to play with and it also gave me a chance to use an old, funky blue fabric that never seemed to play well with any other quilt. Stuff like that makes me do a little {mental} victory dance. Wouldn't want to scare my kids with the real thing. They already think I'm weird enough!

Always love to see this particular border!

And all the fabrics in this quilt did come directly from the scrap bin or from my stash. That's always a fun line in the sand. Make do or somehow make something work? That's the sort of challenge that keeps me going. Love that.

The border was something I had to think about for awhile but eventually decided on a lighter look for the outside. As I currently had a fascination for snowball quilts {never made one before, but thought they could be interesting}, it seemed like a good time to experiment. From there, it was a short jump to continuing the dive into the scrap bin to find those little bits of color for the corners. I am so, so happy with the border on this quilt! I love how it give a lacy, sort of yo-yo look to the quilt. My regular readers know that I'm somewhat compelled to add borders, pieced or applique, to almost every quilt made around here. Can you even imagine this quilt without a border?

And a look at the stitching...

The entire quilt was hand quilted with various colors of #8 perle cotton thread, my go-to these days. Since most of my quilts are hand quilted, this is a super easy way to give instant texture {yum} and also, to get through the quilting in a speedier fashion than traditional hand quilting thread. If you're interested, I also have a 2nd entry in the quilt festival, Flocks of Geese, my brand new finish. Thanks to Amy Ellis for her hard work in putting this festival together. Always fun to cruise through the entries and find new inspiration!