Blogger's Quilt Festival - Fractured Sunlight

I have been waiting for the Blogger's Quilt Festival, hosted by Amy's Creative Side, to unveil this quilt on my blog.  First, though, if you are here from the festival, welcome! If you have not heard of it, click the link to check it out. It is an awesome, online quilt show that will open up for voting at the end of the week. I absolutely love this festival.  I try to visit each and every blog to see the creations and I become so inspired.

On to my entry, which I'm putting into the Two Color Quilt category, I love this quilt for a few different reasons.

-         It makes a bold statement in its simplicity (honestly, it looks much more complicate than it is.)

-         The design is 100% my own, but I did enjoy using the InstaGram community for opinions along the way.  (I love IG these days, feel free to find me at Sarcastic Quilter.)

-         The kids and hubs (who doesn’t usually like modern quilts) all love it and enjoy seeing it on the wall.

-         The kids participated in the photo shoot of the quilt! You have to read on for details on this one. I’ll just say now it was one of my finer parenting moments and I am bragging because it’s so hard to have these moments when they are all teens! LOL

This quilt uses the "Sunrise" block from EQ6 and is foundation pieced. I did a QAL a couple years ago with this block to teach foundation piecing but have been wanting to explore different looks I might get with only two colors. I chose the fabrics.

I made four blocks and tested designs.

I sewed the remainder of the blocks, then pieced borders and sewed them on. Next, I quilted the heck out of this baby, echoing the shapes in each block and border and even mimicking some of the print on the fabrics in places.  

Regarding that parenting moment, it was shortly before school started. The kids nor I had any activities all weekend and the sun was shining.  I told them to get their shoes on, grabbed this and another quilt which needed photographing and we hopped in the car.  When the kids asked what we were doing, I said going on a photo shoot. They all had to come up with places to photograph the quilts at, keeping in mind the style of the quilts and figuring out complimentary backgrounds etc. Reluctant at first, after the 1^st location (a park down the road), they were in the spirit.  Taking my camera and taking photographs themselves or giving me instructions on angles as they were hanging and arranging the quilts.

For example, the shot below actually has my kid pulling on a branch to open up the draped quilt. He passed the little seedling and thought it would be great to drape the quilt on with the background and filtered sun. Kind of cool for a 13 year old, don't you think? I'm convinced these kids have more than we do half the time & we just need to find ways to let them express it.

My kids got creative, we spent a few hours outdoors together and we had fun laughing and sharing. Many of these photos came about because of the quilt's name, "Fractured Sunlight", can you tell?  

There were quite a few people around so it became a big race to get photographs without folks moseying along the paths in the background.

So, I love this quilt. Not just for the personal experiment it was for me in designing, creating and quilting it but for the wonderful excuse it provided for an afternoon of fun and comraderie with my kids.

If you like it, please consider nominating it and giving it a vote.  That would just be some nice icing on the cake to share with the kids.  I know their involvement in the story will make them proud.

I am off to view all the other beautiful entries now, I hope you enjoy the rest of the festival and a big thanks to Amy for hosting and ALL the sponsors this year!!!

Cheers!

Beck