Game Night Quilt

The Game Night quilt pattern is available in my shop!

I rely heavily on my online gallery to help me remember what I’ve made in any given year. I was looking over my 2021 makes a few days ago and felt like something was missing — and then realized that while I shared quite a bit about it on Instagram, I hadn’t written about my Game Night quilt here on the blog!

I made this quilt for this year’s QuiltCon fabric challenge. The challenge specified four shades of Artisan Cotton by Windham Fabrics (and required the use of at least 3 of them), plus a selection of neutrals. I was excited to be using solids this year, but there were still difficulties to work through. I wanted to use all four of the fabrics (I like to use all of them every year — my own personal challenge) but the teal and purple are VERY similar in value, which made it hard. In the end, I settled on using the light purple/gray serving as my “background” fabric of sorts, which provides plenty of contrast with the other three shades.

I got the happy news last week that this quilt was juried into the show!

While I used it for this year’s fabric challenge, this design actually goes back much farther than 2021 — all the way to 2016!! I sketched the first version of this quilt as part of a “30 days of quilt design” challenge.

I’ve played around with the design mockup several times since that original sketch. Last year I submitted it as an idea for an MQG pattern of the month, but they chose this one instead. So, like many of my sketches, it continued to linger in my “ideas” folder…until now!

Although the design is simple, I used a few different techniques. The HSTs, large half circle, and vertical/horizontal stripe blocks are traditionally pieced. The diagonal stripe blocks were foundation paper pieced in order to get the stripes evenly spaced. And the large circle, small circle, and small half circle blocks were hand appliqued. (The circle applique experience I gained working on this quilt came in quite handy!)

I did straight line quilting on my longarm. As I was quilting, I posted a photo on Instagram and it led to some great discussion on longarming in general and the pros and cons of using a longarm machine. You can find that on this post and this post. But the summary, for me, is that longarms are simply another tool in my toolbox.

These machines are sometimes portrayed as magical devices that suddenly make all your quilting dreams come true. I definitely shared some of those thoughts! I knew it would take some practice to learn various motifs and ruler work, but I did not anticipate all of the little things. Loading the quilt onto the frame. Dealing with finicky tension. Do I secure the top to the bars, or float it? Why is this part puckering weirdly?

Straight line quilting has been far more challenging than I expected. The machine is great at moving in a straight line, but the fabric under it…can shift! My piecing skills are good, and my quilt tops are straight, but keeping the piecing lines aligned with the quilting lines still takes constant vigilance.

I have benefitted greatly from tips from quilty friends Audrey, Kelly, and Bobbie, and have gotten better with each quilt. This was my best effort yet!

After finishing the quilting, I blocked this quilt on the floor of my sewing room. I rarely block quilts, but it was slightly skewed after the quilting process — and that skew was very apparent to me since there are so many strong vertical and horizontal lines in the design. I pinned everything down to foam mats and left it overnight to dry.

To finish it off, I couldn’t resist doing a matched binding. This process seems like a lot of work, but it went surprisingly quickly once I got started and I definitely think it was worth the extra time.

The stats:

• Quilt measures 47″ x 58″.
• Top fabrics are Artisan Cotton by Windham Fabrics.
• Backing is a Tula Pink wideback.
• Binding is Artisan Cotton.
• Longarm quilted on my Handiquilter Avante with Aurifil 50 wt thread in #6733 (Twilight).

p.s. I’m doing a 31 day blogging challenge.