Whoo Hoo for Winter Wonderland

It's official! Winter Wonderland won Best Machine Workmanship at AQS Knoxville, TN!

I've got to thank the quilter who called me this morning at 10 am to tell me about the win and then listened as I yelled "Kick A**!" into the phone. I was really surprised and thrilled by this award!

And just in case you're not able to get to Knoxville, TN, here's some photos of Winter Wonderland so you can enjoy her too:

This quilt was constructed as separate blocks, each snowflake first being created with Reverse Shadow Trapunto, a fun technique I invented to make clipping the batting much easier.

The blocks are then layered with silk organza, batting, and backing fabric and quilted. This was really the very first quilt that I used multiple designs from the project and experimented with the way different fillers create different effects and textures on the surface.

When it came to putting all the blocks together, I used 1 inch strips to connect all the blocks together on the back.

On the front, I used a technique I'd learned from Sharon Schambers Bias Binding Videos. I made yards and yards of white bias binding, starched the snot out of it, then pressed and bent the strips into curves.

The curvy strips were then machine appliqued over the surface of the quilt, covering the raw seam allowances and spaces between all the blocks.

It was definitely a fun quilt to make because I could just sit down and stitch one block each evening and by the end of 2 weeks the quilt was completely quilted. Putting it all together actually took more work and effort, but it was definitely worth it in the end.

If you're interested in learning the Reverse Shadow Trapunto technique, check out the Winter Wonderland Quilt Pattern. This 25 page pattern will not only teach you how to make this beautiful quilt, but also how to use this neat technique on other quilts as well.

Now I'm really excited to get to Knoxville and see all the other beautiful quilts! I've received several emails from quilters attending the show wanting to get together.

So to make things easy here's where I will be - on Saturday morning at 10 am I'm planning to be in the food court wearing a red t-shirt. I'll see you there!

Let's go quilt,

Leah