rainbow quilt – Quest Quilts

Small Business Saturday

Hey everyone, I’m still working on getting my Christmas commissions completed, but I took a break earlier to make some wall hangings. I made a Rey and BB8 silhouette wall hanging as well as two rainbow guitar wall hangings. The guitar quilts are very popular, so I think they’ll sell fairly quickly. I’ve made two Rey and BB8 wall hangings before, and they went fast as well, so I’m hoping little Baby Yoda and the Mandalorian haven’t outshined my girl Rey as far as searches and gifts go. I’ll add these to the store page in a bit.

I’m all up and ready as tomorrow is Small Business Saturday! Here’s hoping some of the smaller crafters are feeling the love tomorrow as the holiday season kicks in to full gear.

Online Market Quilt Showcase 8 – Rainbow Mariner’s Compass Quilt

The Yellow Daisy Festival Online Market begins on Tuesday, Sept 8th. In celebration of this, I’m making some posts about the quilts I have ready to go. Each day I’ll feature two or three quilts and tell about their process and what I like most about them. These and other quilts can be found in the Quest Quilts shop on this website or in my Etsy shop.

I’m going to be honest here; this quilt is my pride and joy. It’s a technique called paper piecing, and, as you can imagine, is quite time consuming. I’d wanted to make something like this for ages and had the paper templates printed over a year ago at least. They’d sat in a box in my sewing stuff, and I’d all but forgotten about them. When Covid hit, I had the time to focus on something that would take a while to do. I’d made a couple of these before, so I knew it would be a commitment.

I’m in love with the colors and really wanted to show a gradient with the rainbow shades. I’m proud that I was able to use all fabric that I already had on hand except for the white fabric. The border was an afterthought when I realized it needed something it help bring all the colors in line. The backing was fabric I’d bought on a whim, but I was in love with it. I used the rainbow on it to adjust the colors on the front. This has to be one of the prettiest ones I’ve made; it’s certainly one of the more technically difficult. My hope is that it finds a home where someone will hang it on a wall as a central focal point.

Online Market Quilt Showcase 5 – twin size quilts

I have two twin size quilts that are ready to go. One is a gorgeous pattern that features a rainbow-colored medallion with nature images inside. I couldn’t decide which color I wanted to bring out in the medallion, so I went for all of them. The color variations give this a neat, whimsical look. I imagine it on the bed or draped on the couch of a lady who loves to garden and spend her days outdoors. It could also be perfect for a little girl who is obsessed with rainbows and outdoors. I decided to finish this off with a leaf quilting pattern.

The train quilt was originally meant to be a lap quilt, but it was so long that I realized I could make it a twin size very easily. I really love the 3-D shadowbox effect and decided that the train panels needed to be shown off through that style. The back is blue flannel, so it’s especially warm for those cold nights. I like the train pictures on this one because they aren’t overly cartoonish. I feel like if this were purchased for a child, the child would like it for a good, long time. But I also feel like it would do well for an adult, too. It would make an awesome quilt for an easy char.

Rainbow Mariner’s Compass Quilt

This quilt falls under the “things I’ve been meaning to make” category. English paper piecing is a tedious technique. Each star is made from a wedge, and each wedge is made of two scalene triangles. The design I used for this quilt was a simplest mariner’s compass pattern in the book. The pattern comes from the book Mariner’s Compass Stars by Carol Doak. I’d bought it years ago to make a gift for my husband.

I had originally wanted to make all the stars with batik fabrics, but it didn’t take long to realize that I wasn’t going to have the effect I wanted with what I had on hand. The biggest goal of mine was to use 100% fabrics that I had at home in my stash already. I had the rainbow fabric for the backing and based my colors around it. This was definitely a “quarantine project.” In the end, the only thing that was purchased was some extra white thread. Not bad.

I did get to practice the colors and design on my new quilting software, so that was an extra bonus, and it helped me catch a mistake in my color placement. Can you see what I did?

EQ8 Quilting Software trial run with my colors.

I’ll admit that red fabric is notorious for running dye, even if one pre-washes like I do. This quilt had too much time and love put in to it to take any chances, so I pinned a color catcher sheet over the white sections of the red star. I did NOT come here to play.

The finished result is worth it, and I am in love!

Here is the Etsy listing if you’re interested in purchasing it.

Rainbow Guitar Wall Quilt

Here is the Etsy link to a black version of this quilt.

Before this set, I have made four other guitar quilts and one viola quilt in the same style. I bought the music fabric at a Black Friday sale (okay, it was really a Black Saturday sale) at JoAnn’s and had been sitting on it for almost a year. I hadn’t quite figured out what I wanted to do, but the idea of another guitar quilt set had definitely come to mind. When I found a jelly roll at JoAnn’s that featured an earthy rainbow pallet, I knew what I would do!

What I love most about the guitar quilts is the fact that if you cut out the guitar carefully then you’ll automatically have two quilts! If you notice, one of this set is the negative of the other. I love it.

I’ll admit that the guitar pegs at the top of this one are a little more “homemade” than I’d like, but I know how I plan on fixing that for next time.

For these, I used wool batting instead of cotton to give them a puffier look and keep the weight to a minimum since they’re going on a wall. I’m so used to cotton batting that these feel like they weight nothing at all.

In the past, I’ve done a much more detailed quilting design, but since the music fabric already had texture to it, I didn’t want to distract from it. So I ended up keeping the quilting simple.

These are both for sale, and I’m hoping one of them will sell at the December show I’m doing on the 6th.

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: