Block Flower Quilt {Finished and Featured!}

I got a bit of a surprise yesterday when I was reading the latest issue of Quilters Companion magazine - my Block Flower quilt is in this month's issue #67 (obviously I realised it would be in the magazine at some stage, I just didn't realise it was in this issue.) So I can finally show you the quilt I was working on last November/December.

I took her off to our Botanical Gardens this morning for a photo shoot. When Hobart does autumn well, it does it in spectacular style. It has been a crisp, cold morning, but gloriously sunny - a beautiful morning to walk around the Gardens with quilt in tow. I did get a few strange looks while I was taking these photos ;o)

I used some of my favorite fabrics in this quilt (Good Folks and Garden Party by Anna Maria Horner, Echo by Lotta Jansdotter, Briar Rose by Heather Ross, and lots of Madrona Road by Violet Craft). It is a very spring-time palette of deep pinks, oranges, and reds with a few pops of charcoal grey.

The blocks are simple in design, but a perfect choice to use for larger scale prints.

I am really proud of what I did with the quilting on this quilt. I wanted to create an interesting secondary design with the quilting, and I think I achieved that. I used Aurifil 50wt in Dove grey - someone described this recently as a chameleon thread and it is such a good description. It has become my go-to thread for quilting low volume (light value) fabric, as it seems to blend beautifully into these fabrics, regardless of whether they are cream, white or grey based.

I did use my regular quilting ruler and a Hera marker to mark the long straight lines on the quilt top, but other than that it is all done by eye. I've used a combination of my favorite go-to swirls and pebbles, very dense matchstick quilting (these lines are less than 1/8" apart) and some other straight-line designs in and around the blocks. I loved quilting this one - although it did take a very long time (around 30-40 hours I think.) Cue close up shots of the quilting ;o)

Quilt Stats:
* Size - 80" square
* Fabric - I used a range of prints (Anna Maria Horner, Violet Craft, Lotta Jansdotter) for the flowers, low volume (light value) prints for the block backgrounds, and Kona medium grey for the sashing and border.
* Quilted - by me on my Bernina 440QE, with Aurifil 50wt light grey (Dove) thread

I will be looking for some pattern testers for this quilt pattern, so if anyone is interested please let me know. I have enough testers this time around (thankyou!) but if you'd be interested in testing patterns for me later in the year, please let me know. Several of you were no-reply bloggers, so if you don't hear back from me, it's because I can't reply. I've also decided to start thinking about making some short videos of how I quilt and putting them on You Tube. My question is, what would you guys like to see?

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts!

xx Jess