Geometry of Circles Quilt – An Update!

Five years ago, I went to the International Quilt Festival for the first time. I’d been quilting for ~2 years, and since I’m lucky enough to live in Houston (and the festival is held here every fall), I figured I would check it out. I was blown away by what I saw, and it’s been a fixture on my fall calendar every year since. That first year, I left feeling both crazy inspired and entirely inadequate in my quilting skills. But I also left thinking that it must be really cool to have a quilt in the show, and that maybe someday I’d be able to do that.

You may remember my Geometry of Circles quilt. I made a couple months ago for a Gulf Coast MQG challenge, then brought it home and hung it over our headboard. At the end of May, I entered it in Quilt Festival’s “A World of Beauty” juried show. I’m proud of this little quilt, and thought it might fit in with the aesthetic of the show, but deciding to enter was pretty much on a whim.

But y’all. IT GOT IN. My quilt will be hanging in the International Quilt Festival in November.

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This quilt has to be in the Quilt Festival offices no later than August 22, so it’ll be going in the mail today. Since it’s an odd-shaped quilt that doesn’t have a nice straight top edge, I’ve had to add a rectangle of black backing fabric to the top per the rules of the show:

10. Odd-shaped quilts and quilts with multiple panels must be mounted on black fabric containing a sleeve (see rule #11). The top half of these quilts must be sewn securely to the black fabric. The bottom half should be loose so the judges can examine the back of the quilt. (Quilts with multiple panels hanging side-by-side horizontally may mount them to a single black sleeve.) PLEASE NOTE: If you must mount your quilt on black fabric, it does not have to extend past the edges of your quilt, but IF IT DOES, your quilt measurements MUST INCLUDE the black fabric.)

This gives me a good place to attach a hanging sleeve, but the process has been a bit of blind-leading-the-blind because I couldn’t find any good tips online about the best way to do something like that! This is what I came up with:

Instead of backing the quilt with one large black square, I decided to use a rectangle of black fabric that attaches just to the top — essentially, I’ve added black “corners” to one side of the quilt. I cut a single layer of black cotton and hemmed the edges, then hand stitched it down along the binding. I had also stitched the bottom of the rectangle across the back of the quilt to make sure it was really secure, but then I re-read the rules and noticed that it specifically said that the bottom half should be loose. So I ripped those stitches back out!

From there, I made a 4″ hanging sleeve and hand stitched that to the back of my black rectangle. It didn’t occur to me until I was stitching the sleeve that since the black backing is a single layer, the stitches used to secure the sleeve show on the front. But I took care to make them tiny, and I used matching black thread, so they’re not very noticeable — and my assumption is that this will be acceptable to the show! The only way around that would have been to make a black quilted or otherwise layered rectangle for the backing, and that seems like overkill.

So! Fingers crossed that when this quilt arrives at the IQA office, they find everything acceptable. Can’t wait to see it on display in November!