Blogger's Quilt Festival - Photo Shoot

It's the Blogger's Quilt Festival over at Amy's Creative Side. Quilts are divided into 12 categories: Mini, Small, Large, Appliqué, Art, Hand Quilted, Home Machine Quilted, Modern, Original Design, ROYGBIV, Scrappy and Viewer's Choice.

I was just thinking this weekend that my the time the local Fall Fair rolls around I'll have a few finished quilts to enter that haven't been used yet. Because, you know, once it's in use, something is bound to get spilled on it, and I'm okay with that. While blog surfing, I came across a few entries to the online festival and thought I might as well enter! 

It was hard to choose which two quilts to enter, so here is my first entry, in the Appliqué category:

"Photo Shoot"

This quilt was the first one I posted on my blog, last July. It's an original design and my first appliqué project! It started with one block and evolved as I went. I just realized I'm snuggled under it right now as I type. Here are some photos of my process and the quilt's evolution:

It was a long project, over a year to make. It started out with a little inspiration – reading, taking pictures, looking at fabric, surfing blogs. I sketched some cameras then drew them to scale and designed a camera template.

I learned to applique and started with one block.  

One block turned into eight, learning new stitches for applique on my machine as I went.

Almost all of the camera fabrics are from previous projects.

Then I went back to the graph paper to do a little more math – ratios and percentages and scale drawings – to make a giant pieced camera.

Next came the photo blocks – looking at my own pictures to design photos from photos. With some more calculations, colouring and drawing, I finalized a layout and put it all together.

I took it to my local long-arm quilter who did some amazing custom quilting and tuned it into this.

Here are some close-ups of the blocks and the quilting.

 I could go on and on but this post is already too long! To see the previous post about this, go here.

Please go check out the Blogger Quilt Festival to see the other entries. There are some beautiful and creative quilts. Voting runs from May 22-29, so check back then to vote for your favourites!