My Variation Quilt 2013

When I got my quilting machine I decided to look for other long arm quilters in my area.  I searched online and found the Southern Oregon Longarm Assoc or SOLA.  A great group of women from all over Southern Oregon who want to educate other quilters and promote the the art of longarm quilting.

Every year they do  what is called a Variation Quilt. They pick a theme and a design to make a 36 x 36 quilt.  The quilts then travel around to different quilt shows for the year to promote longarm quilting.

This year's theme was perfect for me "Holidays".  We could use fabrics representing the holiday of our choice. Well for years now I have collected Halloween fabrics. I have always enjoyed the Halloween as the start of  the holiday season.  Pumpkin carving, all the trick or treaters, making costumes for my boys, it all was a blast.

So it didnt take me long to choose my holiday for the variation quilt. Here is the pattern that one of the members put together.

Sorry for the flash. I had trouble getting the pic to load. 

I just love this orange fabric.  It is called The Ghastlies and is such a fun large print that I had to use to use it for the outside border.

 I did some free motion webbing and added spiders to it. Cant have a Halloween quilt without a few spiders

 For the center I chose to fussy cut these jolly jack-o-lanterns and surrounded them with a bright orange tone on tone and yellow small print. The ghost town print is a 3 1/2 inch border I quilted with witches flying on their broomsticks. I wish the pic came out better so you could have seen the quilting. I is really cute.

 

For the binding I pieced together these 2 1/2 inch strips to make a checker board look to it. Below is the piece before I cut it and how it turned out when I finished the binding

 

And this is what it looked like when finished

My husband considers himself somewhat of a comedian and he said the group in the pic below is me and my three sisters.  Isn't he hilarious (not)

Maybe I should tell him he is this guy with the cane

And here is the finished product.  It was a lot of fun and I am pretty happy with the way it came out. 

So what are all of you working on with your quilting time. I love to read your blogs and find new ones to follow.