Blogger's Quilt Festival - Spring 2015 - Use Your Illusion

It's that time of the year...twice a year during quilt market, Amy over at Amy Creative Side hosts a Blogger's Quilt Festival.  We are allowed to link up two quilts to the various categories and have the opportunity to visit and be inspired by other blogger's wonderful quilts.  I was so excited to be highlighted in March in one of Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival Features.

My first entry to the festival is Use Your Illusion which I designed as the Modern Quilt Guild's free quilt pattern for March for all of their members.  My post about the quilt and design can be found here and I am entering the quilt into the Original Design category.  

I came up with the design for Use Your Illusion when I was playing with idea of echoed diamonds in EQ7 and then started randomly erasing some of the lines.  I loved the resultant effect with the partial and full geometric diamonds set on negative space.  The quilt reminded me of the 1990's Guns 'N Roses song "Use Your Illusion", so that is how it earned its name.

Abby Latimer of Latimer Lane quilted this quilt for me.  This is the first quilt I have ever had long arm quilted and Abby did such a wonderful job.  I wanted a curved quilting pattern to contrast with the straight lines of the piecing, but I wanted the curved quilting to be precise (my quilting with my domestic machine always has an organic, more random feel to it).  I picked out a figure 8 pattern that I think gives the quilt texture without taking away from the piecing.

This pattern is totally paper pieced which gives such precision to the quilt top. It is a lot to paper piece, but the paper piecing is very beginner friendly and the paper pieced paper templates are designed so that all of the seams within the quilt top nest for perfect points and less bulk.

Here are just a couple more pictures of the finish.  This is one of my favorite quilts I have ever made, thanks for taking a look!

My other entry Two-Tone Plus Plus is entered into the small quilts category and can be found here.

Here are my entries over the years:

Fall 2013:  Pi Quilt
Fall 2013:  Pink Broken Herringbone Quilt

Spring 2014:  Kona 2013 Quilt
Spring 2014:  Improv Quilt Two

Fall 2014:  Oh The Places You'll Go
Fall 2014:  Vintage Star

If you have stopped by my blog for the first time from the quilt festival thank you!  You can find some of my finishes, tutorials, and my new mystery quilt-a-long (starting in June!!) on the tabs at the top of the page.  

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