Row by Row Experience 2016

This is the second year that I have participated in the Row by Row Experience. If you don't know about it, HERE's a link where you'll find all the information. This year the theme was Home Sweet Home.

It's all put together just before I sewed a small border on.

Here are close-ups of some of the blocks.

I used these four segments separately in my quilt instead of sewing them up like this, in one row.

I chose to cut my flowers out of fabric as one piece instead of doing the 8 petaled flowers that were in the pattern. We are given liberties as to how we interpret the design.

I'm glad I used this background fabric.

A nice air mail feature that I replicated with marking pens and the inside of the envelope (the butterfly) was a scrap that just fit.

The envelopes were fun to make and I hope I can use the pattern in another project.

I really liked the fact that a lot of the rows this year were vertical and some shops gave you the option of making them vertical or horizontal. One shop had two different patterns in different directions so you could choose which one you wanted.

I used the same fabrics in a couple of the rows. The sky blue was used repeatedly as was the leaf fabric.

I had to inform the shop that designed this row that they had left out the little mouse from their pattern. The butterfly was my own addition. If you click on the photo, you can get a closer look at the fabric I used for the owls. It was hard to find feather fabric and so the owl bodies are actually bark.

 The original pattern and kit for this gnome had him and his toadstool sitting in the middle of a yellow field. The stars had the same yellow. I wanted the row to look a bit more interesting so I gave the row some grass, flowers and sky. I didn't buy any kits since I had so much fabric in my stash to use up.

Here's the quilt stretched on the frame. I hand quilted the whole thing and took it off the frame last Wednesday. On Thursday, I finished putting the binding, label and a hanging sleeve on. Saturday, I brought it in to The Workroom on Queen Street  and retrieved my prize of 25 fat quarters and the bonus prize because I used The Workroom's row in my quilt. It's the last row in my quilt and basically spells out Queen Street West because that is where the store is located.

My queen photo came out too blurry to use so click on some of other photos to see what she looks like. This is the other part of the bottom row. I used my own flowers once again and made the heart red instead of the black in the instructions. I quilted the compass points too. At first I was going to use two different fabrics but then I realized that I didn't have to. I could just quilt the other half of the compass points. It saved on time and it saved my fingers from quilting through more fused fabrics.

I don't know which of these two photos is better.

There are no photos of me with the quilt.

Except this one. 

The Workroom first posted photos on instagram - not facebook. I found this out because my daughter's friend saw it and asked if that was my quilt.
Now, the quilt photo is on facebook and it was noted that I hand quilted it.
https://www.facebook.com/rowbyrowstudio/?fref=nf
 My name is still misspelled, though - it's DOlores (that happens a lot!)

It was a lot of fun choosing the rows and then putting it all together. I didn't have too much trouble figuring out a layout this year and didn't have to add my own row.

Now, I'm off to sew some little outfits for my favourite little ones. 

I'm linking this to The Needle and Thread Network. Hop on over to see more fibre creations.