Moda Bake Shop Feature-Quilting Bee Sampler Quilt

First things first, don't forget to enter the Give-away from Vintage Modern Fabrics hosted here on my blog.  You can click on the "Give-away" to link it or scroll down to the previous post for your chance to enter.

Moda Bake Shop gave me the opportunity to play with Kate Spain's newest fabric line, Daydreams for my next project.  The fabric should be hitting the shelves of your favorite local fabric shop this February.  I fell COMPLETELY in love with this fabric line.  My four-year old daughter has already claimed the quilt and I guess I will be making another one. --But that's enough talk for now...here's some photos:

I just can't get enough of looking at this picture!  I'm pinching myself that I actually took the photo and made the quilt.  It's one of those that if it were in a magazine, I'd just look at it over and over.  I usually like how my quilts turn out, but this one I am just in awe over.  Did I REALLY just do that?  Whoa!  Please excuse my ramblings, haven't you ever had one of those moments?

I was so infatuated with this quilt, that I tried every new and difficult machine quilting technique I possibly could on it!  It was well worth the challenge.

I could not resist micro-stippling down all of those swirly stripes!  I just had to do it.  It was so tricky that the quilt had to be loaded 4 times on the frame to reach them all.  First it had to be ditched for stability, then rotated 90' for the outer borders.  Then it had to be loaded diagonally to do those stripes (a little crazy, I know, but well worth it).  Then it was diagonally loaded again because I only had enough diagonal reach to do one half of the quilt.

Diagonally loaded.

I used two layers of batting to create that "puffy" look.   The quilting ideas were a combination of my continuous curve & swirls method along with those I learned in a Craftsy course "Dot to Dot Quilting" by Angela Walters.

I did it!  Curved Cross  Hatching!  At this point I was doing (literally) my "happy dance" and my little girl walks in the room and said, "Uh, Mommy, you okay?"  I explained to her what I did, she looked at me like I was TOTALLY NUTS!  That's okay, I'm going to curve cross-hatch again.  I learned the technique from Ronda K. Beyer's book co-written with Karen McTavish and purchased "Ronda's Rulers" from Quilter's Rule.

 Since this was so much work, this counts as my KISMIF (keep it simple, make it fun)  FMQ (free motion quilting) post for this week.  In a future KISMIF FMQ (probably February because I have yet ANOTHER quilt pattern feature to show next week) will show photo step-by-step of how to do the continuous curve cross-hatching.  Until then, share something fun in the home arts you've been working on!  Also, don't forget to enter the give-away!

Do you like my pattern?  I've designed more!  They can be viewed and downloaded at the following  sponsors: My Etsy Shop (don't forget your coupon code on the LHS side bar), Craftsy, Connecting Threads and Pattern Spot.  Thanks!