MQG Challenge Quilt Finished

I am excited that today I have a finish to share with you!  Here is my finish (just in time) for the Riley Blake Challenge from the Modern Quilt Guild.  

The rules for the challenge were as follows:

• Make something fantastic that is quilted.
• Make something you’ve never done before.
• Challenge yourself to learn something new.
• Use only Riley Blake Cottage Garden fabrics and coordinating Riley Blake basics and solids.

An equilateral triangle quilt has been on my to-do list forever and after I saw that some of the fabrics had a repeating triangle print, I was sold.  In addition to making a triangle quilt for the first time, this was also the first time I had ever bound a quilt without 90 degree corners.

I figured out how to design a triangle quilt in EQ and started playing with ideas. (Here is my tutorial on how to design triangle quilts using EQ7.)  The quilt actually came together much easier than I thought it would, I was always so afraid of sewing non-square or rectangle pieces, but it turned out that my fear was completely unfounded.  (Here is my in-progress post.)

I knew that for the quilting in the background areas, I wanted to echo the hexagon shape formed by the print fabrics and then fill in the remaining space with a dense back and forth quilting.  I also wanted to mimic the quilting from the print areas in some of the background triangles.

Figuring out the quilting for the print areas was more difficult.  I first started to quilt a star pattern within the print triangles but the quilting was difficult to see and not dense enough compared to the background.  I put out a call for help on Instagram (@MeadowMistDesigns) and got some wonderful suggestions.  I wound up using a ribbon candy design that not only looked good, but took much less time and had less threads to bury than my original plan.

I used Lorna's @ Sew Fresh Quilts tutorial on binding inside corners to figure out how to bind the quilt and while it is far from perfect, it turned out pretty decent.

The quilt finished at about 48" x 48", a perfect size for a new baby.  I have a new niece or nephew due this December and if the baby is a girl, I will be sending this quilt off to her.

Here are just some more pictures, including the pieced back, to celebrate the quilt's finish.
 

I am linking up to Link a Finish Friday, Whoop Whoop Friday, Thank Goodness Its Finished Friday, Finish It Up Friday, Fabric Frenzy Friday, and Show Off Saturday @ Sew Can She.

The MQG challenge quilt was also my July goal for ALYOF. (my goal setting post was here)