Blogger's Quilt Festival: Riley's Showstopper

I hemmed and hawed about which quilts to submit for the spring Bloggers Quilt Festival hosted by Amy's Creative Side.  I actually missed out on the fun last fall, but didn't go too far back in the quilt vault for my entries.  Of course, it doesn't help that I've got a couple quilt tops just hanging out and waiting to be finished, but I suppose that just makes it more likely that I'll participate in the next round!

Most of this content is from the original post, so sorry for the repeats for my previous followers:

I finally put the last few stitches in the binding for my Riley Blake challenge quilt yesterday.  It's no secret that I really struggled with trying to figure out how to use these fabrics.  But on the day that I made myself sit down and figure something out, I took out my entire stash of solids to play around with.

Once I placed the orange circle print with the magenta and placed the chevron print (which I had previously been thinking was more blue) in with the aqua and turquoise, it all made sense and clicked into place for me.  Rainbow, of course!!  So now what to do with them?

In the comments for my Stumped post, someone suggested that I limit myself to using something I already had instead of searching for some brand new project to try.  Awesome idea!  I went to my list of patterns that had been collected but not used and came across the Showstopper pattern by Don't Call Me Betsy.  When she released this paper pieced pattern, I fell in love and bought it immediately but wasn't sure when I'd get the chance to use it.  At 96 pieces per block, it's by far the most complex paper pieced block I've tried and I can't really imagine making an entire quilt from it.  A mini works perfectly.  Each block is 12" finished, so this mini ended up at 24" square.

Elizabeth is a genius - all the secondary shapes that this pattern makes really keeps your eye moving all over the mini.

I really liked getting to make the prints the focal points of the blocks while all the solids keep those shapes so crisp and sharp!

The spiral quilting from my Brightly Broken mini made another appearance here.  Instead of white thread, I actually used a light lavender.

It doesn't show up too well in the photos, but in person I think it adds a little extra interest.

The only fabric from the challenge bundle that I didn't use was the grey and white stripe.  I would have used it for the binding, but knew that I would run short.  Instead, I used more of the charcoal grey solid and threw in a few bias strips from my print scraps.  I really like the effect of those bonus pops of color around the edges!

So if you've managed to bear with me, come and check out all the other entries over at Amy's Creative Side.  They are amazing and you will more than likely come away with another blog (or five) to follow.  I'll be posting my second entry tomorrow, but in the meantime happy browsing!