Bloggers' Quilt Festival 2012

A big thank you to Very Kerry Berry for talking about the Amy's Creative Side Bloggers' Quilt Festival in her post today! I am new to her blog but she is already a huge source of inspiration to me.

I am really excited to participate in this quilt festival!

The Quilting Doberman blog started as a way for me to share my creative efforts with an out-of-state friend.

If it wasn't for Paula I am not sure how long it would have taken me to consider starting a blog on my own so I am always grateful to her for encouraging me. The original Quilting Doberman was named Odin and although he has since passed away it makes me happy knowing this blog was started featuring him. He was such a life changing love.

Nim is my current young boy shown with my quilt submission for this festival:

This quilt is represents some firsts for me in quilting as well as meaning a lot to me because of the intended recipient. 

It is the result of my first time ever trying a mystery quilt. The hard work creating the pattern and writing the instructions was done by Janet Wickell of about.com: 2012 New Year's Day Mystery Quilt.

The peach colored fabric in the quilt was actually selected by a sister who is about to finish her degree to become a teacher. At the time she had helped me pick out this fabric to make a skirt. I knew that if I liked how the mystery quilt turned out that she would be receiving this quilt as her graduation gift this coming June. She has worked extremely hard to get where she is today and I know she is going to be an incredible teacher.
 

Color selection does not come easy to me and probably one of my biggest lessons from this project was in color. It was a big challenge for me to select fabrics based on guidelines and trust (hope) the finished product was going to work. I actually became a lot more comfortable working with bolder colors after this quilt.

This quilt was large and quilted on a home sewing machine. I challenged myself to start playing with the design of free motion more in this quilt. It is probably the most I have ever crossed over my own stitching while quilting but I got much better at design and more confident that I could control that design.

I also entered this quilt in my first ever quilt show with Pacific Fabrics of Bellevue, WA. It was an in-store show for customers to display their projects. 

Thank you for taking the time to learn about this special quilt and my blog!