Sunday, May 19, 2013

Mod Pop for Blogger's Quilt Festival

Mod Pop

Welcome to my entry into the Blogger's Quilt Festival. This is my king size Mod Pop quilt, which still has no name, although she lives on my bed. I worked on this quilt a lot over the fall and winter, so my regular readers already know all about her.

This king size quilt is 98" x 91", which is 8.2 feet tall by 7.6 feet wide. She is made from cottons in pink, orange and red, most but not all of them are Konas. The turquoise and royal blue chains are Essex linen. Julie from Distant Pickles designed this excellent pattern and it is available here.

Mod Pop - detail

I quilted this quilt my self on my Janome Horizon - which has an extra wide harp for quilting. I free motioned a squareish stipple on the background red bits and I used my walking foot to echo the chains.

Quilting monster quilts

I used a whole bunch of red/orange/pink and blue/turquoise variegated and plain threads - Aurafil, Superior Threads King Tut and Sulky.

 Mod Pop back

You can see the quilting on the back a bit better - for the back I used a king size grey sheet. That photo was taken before I washed her.

Mod Pop - detail

I call this quilting "modern industrial" because it is not even close to perfect. The heavy quilt - there are a lot of seams - pulled the needle every time I stopped and although I tried hard to hold everything in place, the quilt shifted and pulled on the needle, often making little jogs, especially in the lines echoing the chains. But as I expected, you really don't notice that at all once the quilt is washed and dried.

Mod Pop after washing.

There she is on my king size bed. I made the binding out of left over bits of the reds, pinks and oranges.

Scrappy binding ready for the quilt.

In the spirit of modern industrial, and because I could not bring my self to hand stitch about 41 feet, I machine stitched the binding down. I followed the excellent tutorials from my friend Marianne from The Quilting Edge here and here. I did have to redo a couple of the corners, but I am getting better at them.

Mod Pop

These next two photos are from before I washed this quilt. If you look you can see that there is a fair bit of drawing in from the wash and dry. I pre-washed all the fabrics, so that draw in is coming from the shrinkage in the cotton batting and the thread.

Mod Pop

The colours for this quilt were inspired to a large degree by the Andy Warhol portraits that use the turquoise and navy with aquas and blues. His images and colours are sort etched in my brain and they just felt like the right fit for this pattern. These colours are really hard to photograph, all I can say it that she is pretty bright in real life, sometimes I wonder if sunglasses are required.

Triangles

This last photo is how she looks in a perfect afternoon light, with a mini quilt in progress.

I hope you are enjoying the Blogger's Quilt Festival. Thank you to Amy who does so much work to make this happen each year. I hope you are enjoying all the other quilts, I sure am.


 Best,

Leanne

47 comments:

Annabella said...

So lovely to see her again -she's such a beauty. I just love the colours you used and I'm not sure I knew before the inspiration behind that palette. Gorgeous!

Little Island Quilting said...

Lol re 'modern industrial'. Great quilt.

Karen said...

Love ;)

Katherine said...

I love your Mod Pop quilt, Leanne. She is absolutely glorious! The palette is so striking and makes the most of this beautiful quilt design. Well done with quilting a king-size quilt on your domestic machine. Such wonderful texture, a perfect complement to the design!

SuperMomNoCape said...

What a bright, colourful quilt. I love how you made that single row of in a darker blue. It really makes the quilt unique.

Lorna McMahon said...

I admire anyone's Mod Pop... and think this design is genius, but I enjoyed seeing what steps you took to make this quilt your own. Great colours, great quilting, and I love the binding!

Dianne Neale said...

I'd love to see this in real life. Could you squeeze her in your suitcase to London?

Deborah Hamilton said...

That is a wonderful quilt. I like the way you quilted with the curves, and the quilting looks fabulous from the back. Good job!

Katy Cameron said...

Hee hee, love the 'modern industrial' quilting, it does look great :o)

CitricSugar said...

That is one HUGE quilt - I'm impressed that you got it through your machine! I've wrestled large quilts but not generally with such great results...

Beautiful Mod Pop - I love the blue strip!

Sheila said...

Fabulous Mod Pop - well timed for me as I have just finished all the piecing on mine and am pondering the quilting now.
I love the darker blue line, looks well on your bed.

Marjorie's Busy Corner said...

gorgeous as always Leanne!!

Debbie said...

oh this is a winner in my book! Such an amazing quilt!

Susan said...

Such an amazing quilt! Your use of colour is inspiring!

Catherine said...

Great choice Leanne. It look fantastic on the bed

Heather D. said...

Just gorgeous Leanne. I love how the quilting stands out so well on the backing.

beaquilter said...

its looking great!

Mrs Flying Blind... said...

Gigantic and completely awesome!

Di said...

Good choice as it is such a great quilt. Di x

Judith, Belfast said...

A brilliant entry L! Jxo

Camilla said...

Fantastic! Love the colours and the design and of course the execution too. The square stipple paired with the echoing of the wiggles is really effective.

Sue Daurio said...

wow that is a wonderful quilt and looks awesome on the bed!

Jess @ Elven Garden Quilts said...

It's simply stunning Leanne. And I love how you've blurred the sides of the photo - an idea I'm stealing for future, as our bedroom is always messy and I never photograph quilts on our bed because of it ;o)

Caroline said...

Great colours, gorgeous job!

Carla said...

It's so amazing. Love all that quilting.

Carla said...

What a gorgeous quilt and wonderful photography shots to show it off!

MariQuilts said...

She's a beauty.....even more so in real life.

Canadian Abroad said...

So pleased you chose to put this quilt in, Leanne. It is gorgeous and despite you thinking that the quilting is not so perfect (mine certainly never is and I never ever tried quilting something this big) I think the way you did it to highlight the pattern is pure genius.

heart of charnwood said...

Beautiful, another great entry to the competition! :o)

Patti said...

My favourite Mod Pop, and so happy to see it in the Festival!

Anonymous said...

Wow. And by that I mean WOW!

Tiffany said...

It's gorgeous. I especially love the way it looks on the back!

mb. said...

wow! just WOW!

Paulette said...

Fantastic! I especially like the one darker blue row. Beautifully quilted too.

audrey said...

Incredible! This is the very best version of this pattern I've seen! Love it.:)

www.randomthoughtsdoordi.com said...

i just love this color palette and you did a beautiful job from piecing all the way through to the quilting.

grapes and hearts said...

Whoopie! You chose a stunning fabric combination and your quilt looks truly awesome! Great job!!!

Poppyprint said...

I love this quilt Leanne and can feel your pain with the moving needle with quilting. No matter how big the harp is, the weight of the quilt is always going to be a factor, right? We're our own worst critics, of course because once it's washed and dried it's almost impossible to find those frustrating bits. All I see here is a gorgeous, colourful, happy quilt!

Robin said...

Beautiful work! I love the "industrial" quilting-- it is fabulous! And your scrappy binding is just so happy. LOVE! Thanks for sharing!

Unknown said...

I really love the quilting on this one! And of course the curved piecing is great, too. :)

DeborahGun said...

amazing! I have just nominated this as my favourite - I love it!

beaquilter said...

i just love this quilt and voted for you

Anonymous said...

I voted too fast .... after looking at the quilting on this quilt that YOU did yourself, I think this quilt is great....and I should have voted here.

Books_Bound said...

Gorgeous! I love your color combination, and this pattern is always so striking.

Kaynik said...

An amazing quilt! I love the colours.

ktreve (at) hotmail (dot) com

elle said...

It really is a lovely quilt. Leanne. You did a great job and it and the mini make a super header for your blog. I hadn't thought about thread shrinking but sure, why not. I DO like the shrinkage effect on my own bed quilts.

elle said...

hmm, lost my comment. But this is really a lovely quilt. You did a great job. It and the mini make a super header for your blog. I never thought about thread shrinkage but I guess it would, the batting for sure which is an effect I like on my bed quilts.