Supernova Quilt - and Blogger's Quilt Festival

OMG, Blogger's back! Did we all survive the outage? Just barely? Good, because I've got a quilt to show you. And if you're visiting my blog for the first time via the Blogger's Quilt Festival, welcome! Come on in, make yourself at home. : )

My Supernova quilt is complete. If this is your first visit here, a little background: This is my own design, which I originally made with the Hope Valley line. I had a few requests for the pattern, but since I've never written a pattern before, I decided to turn it into a quilt along. Click here to see this quilt in all the phases of its construction and to learn how to make your own, if you are so inclined.

I made this version from a mix of fabric lines, in a color palette loosely inspired by Heather Ross's Mendocino line. The background is Kona Coal and the binding is Michael Miller's Ta-Dot in Sunny Yellow.

There is a chance I may have gone slightly overboard with the quilting on this. : ) Dense straight-line quilting is something I've been wanting to try for a long time now, and I do like how it turned out. But while I was actually doing the quilting? I was this close to checking myself into the county mental health complex. So, while I'm happy with the end result, I don't think I'll be returning to this well very often. If at all.

To make the converging lines pattern, I marked the center diagonals and started by quilting a big "X" from corner to corner. Then, using that "X" as my guide, I worked the quilt one quarter at a time, going from one edge/corner, up to the center, and back down to the other edge/corner, always using the previously stitched line as my guide for the next line. Sounds like a good way to do it, right? Wrong. My quilt got a bit distorted as I worked. The center of each edge of the quilt got pushed out, and as a result, the top is no longer square. It also won't lie quite flat! I'm not sure if it's a basting problem, or because I wasn't always stitching from the center out, or a combination of the two. Either way—not so good.

But I am very glad I did it—it's been a learning experience, that's for sure. And the fact that it doesn't lie flat doesn't actually bother me all that much, since it's not going on a bed. I love the colors, love the back, and love the look of the mental-institution quilting—now that it's finally done and I've stopped cursing at it.

But most of all, I LOVE that so many of you made Supernovas along with me. I really enjoyed taking you through the process of making this quilt. And I learned a lot about pattern writing in the process. It's been an invaluable experience! So without further ado, let's check out all the finished 'Novas:

1. supernova complete, 2. Supernova!, 3. Supernova Quilt Finish, 4. Supernova, 5. Supernova, 6. Oceanic Supernova Front, 7. Supernova Finished...Yay!, 8. Supernova, finished, 9. Completed Babynova front, 10. Supernova complete 5.2.11, 11. Supernova Quilt Along-Done!, 12. 100_1402, 13. Supernova quilt finished!, 14. Supernova full shot, 15. Black Hole (a Supernova variation), 16. Supernova complete, 17. Hooty Supernova - finished!, 18. SupernovaFinished, 19. Super Nova, 20. Finished Supernova

Thank you for quilting along with me! If you haven't finished your quilt, or even if you haven't started yet, I hope you will still do so. The Flickr group will remain open, discussion can continue in the forums there, and I'm leaving the "Gallery of Completed Quilts" linky open permanently.

And this is a timely finish: I'm linking up to the Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side! This is such a fun event—go check out all the beautiful quilts over there!