Retro Rubies Wall Hanging // Blogger's Quilt Festival

Out of all the events online each year, the blogger's quilt festival is probably my absolute favorite! After recently participating in a actual physical quilt show I have realized that juried shows are not my cup of tea. What I love about the Blogger's Quilt Festival is that perfection does not matter, its about the heart and the love behind a quilt not whether the quilting has perfect tension and if your binding is hand stitched. Blogger's Quilt Festival gives ALL blogging quilters a chance to share their quilt projects whether you are a brand new quilter or have been quilting for 40 years, in an encouraging inspirational way! I find this absolutely perfect and one of the goals I too try to achieve here at Pile O' Fabric, so if this is your first time visiting, Welcome! You will find many quilting tutorials, block tutorials, quilt alongs, and sewing events here at Pile O' Fabric and I do hope you will join me!

The Retro Rubies

Many of you may have already seen my Retro Rubies quilt throughout the web due to the Retro Rubies QAL that I am hosting right now (which by the way is not too late to join). The Retro Rubies is a quilt pattern that I made for the Modern Patchwork Magazine Spring issue 2013. This magazine can be purchased at arialane.com. In fact in the magazine is a full spread article about this years Blogger's Quilt Festival by Amy Ellis which is quite fantastic! So I only thought it befitting to choose this quilt to share about for the festival. The Retro Rubies quilt was inspired by a bundle of fabric, Oakshott Ruby Reds to be exact. Now you know why I am called Pile O' Fabric ; ). Michael at Oakshotts had sent me this beautiful bundle of Ruby Reds to play with and after staring at it for days I began sketching out the Retro Rubies. The sketch sat around for months and months waiting to come to life. Then last year I hosted the Totally Groovy QAL and we made a quilt that had a TON of curves. Doing so gave birth to a curves obsession! Months later I began working on patterns for my new pattern company Aria Lane and Retro Rubies was one of the first. I can't say the experience of making the Retro Rubies was without a hitch there were moments when I wanted to pull my hair out :). When I began quilting I stupidly chose to use cream thread on the top and matching pink thread on the bottom, so the back of the quilt would look beautiful and blend well. Well im sure as you can imagine I had pink dots all over the front of my quilt in the cream from the thread on the back :( Eventually I calmed down and got over it. It's always hard to decide which of the quilts you have made is your favorite, but I think I can say that this is currently my favorite quilt I have ever made. It now hangs oh so beautifully in my living room, and everyday I just stop and stare.

Quilt Specs

• Fabrics: Oakshott Ruby Reds and Kona Cotton in Putty
• Threads: Aurifil in Strawberry and Tantone
• Size: 44" x 46" Wall Hanging
• Bloggers Quilt Festival #29 // Wall Hanging Category

Thanks for visiting Pile O' Fabric, and for participating in the Blogger's Quilt Festival! If you would like to see more quilting projects of mine you can visit my project photo gallery here. I am looking forward to viewing the show!

Alyssa