Saturday, October 25, 2014

To the Rescue - A finish and Blogger's Quilt Festival entry

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month so it is the perfect time to show you my most recent finish and my first entry in the Blogger's Quilt Festival.
AmysCreativeSide.com


The idea for this quilt started with the pattern Flower Box Garden by Deborah Johnson Quiltmaker May/June 2012.
These are the fabrics that I had to work with.
I altered the block plan in that instead of the pieced feature blocks with the appliqued petals I used the EMS focus fabric instead.
And here is the completed quilt...

 To the Rescue
My kidlets helped out as quilt holders a couple of days ago while I took the pictures.
It was very windy that day and they had a tough time just holding onto it. Little Sunshine, who's fingers are just barely visible on the upper left side, was holding on for dear life.
It acted like a sail and I was just lucky to get these decent shots. It goes without saying that they lost hold of it more than once but it never flew off.
No matter how hard we tried nor how long we waited the wind would not die down enough to get a full on picture of the back but I think you can get a good idea from this picture.  As I wanted this quilt to appeal to all members of the Fire and EMS family, I chose a fire truck, ambulance and police fabric for the back. But... I wasn't able to get enough of it anywhere and since I'm tending to like pieced backings anyway, I put it together this way using the Red ladders and fire hoses fabric for the other side.
I'm happy to say that I free motion quilted this one on my longarm Penelope with a single loops, double loops and stars pattern.
I used Glide thread in Cardinal and I think it is just enough color without overpowering the white fabric areas.
This quilt was made as a fund raiser for Breast Cancer Awareness and it is being raffled off this weekend at a EMS trade show in Rochester. The ticket sales proceeds will be donated to the Northeastern chapter of Susan G. Koman Race for the Cure. I really hope that the response is huge and a lot of money is raised.
My employer donated all of the fabrics and batting for this donation quilt because his wife is a breast cancer survivor and the company is committed to raising money for this very worthwhile cause.
The original raffle was supposed to be held in June at an even bigger industry trade show but it was pouring rain and our booth was outside.  Needless to say that the 1st 2 days of the show we didn't see many visitors to our booth so the owner decided to postpone the raffle until the show this month, which thankfully is indoors so there is no chance of the quilt getting soaking wet again.
This was a really fun quilt to design and I hope that it achieves its goal of raising awareness and a lot of funds for Breast Cancer Awareness. This quilt is entered into the Large Quilts category and finished at 92" x 92".  You can see this quilt and all of the others entered into this category here.

The voting for the viewer's choices in each category will run from Nov 1st through the 7th so I'll be sure to remind you to hop over then to cast your votes. You can also vote for this quilt as one of your Viewer's Choice favorites here. I hope you enjoy the show.

3 of you added your own colorful comments:

Needled Mom said...

It turned out beautifully, Michele. Your fabric choices were perfect.

Carol Swift said...

It's a beautiful quilt and it looks great blowing in the wind! I love the fabrics and the design.

Rachell said...

oh my! I adore the fabric! That's a great pattern to spotlight a novelty print! I wish I could find some of that fabric, too!
congrats!