Blogger's Quilt Festival...Circle Peeps

Hey all!  This is my first time participating in the Blogger's Quilt Festival hosted by Amy's Creative Side.  I'm submitting two of my (semi) recent finishes.  This entry is for my appliqued circle quilt featuring Lizzy House's Castle Peeps line:

Circle Peeps

52" x 64"

Machine pieced and quilted on my home machine with Guterman white thread

Category:  ROYGBIV Quilts

I loved this fabric line by Lizzy House as soon as I saw it and immediately purchased more fabric at one time than I ever had before.  I had also seen a great tutorial for an appliqued circle quilt that I thought would really show off the cuteness of the print.  I assembled all the appliqued blocks fairly quickly  so was feeling pretty pleased with myself. 

Originally I had made 6” wide strips of stacked coins from each of the fabrics for a border. 

But when those strips were all sewed and cut and I placed them against the quilt top, it just felt too busy.  So I put it all aside and promptly forgot about it to start something else fun and exciting.  Fast forward 2 years and all these pieces were still sitting around – those Peeps must be mighty patient.  

Umm...hello?  Remember us?

I wanted to finish up the Peeps, but those stacked coin strips were just hanging me up.  I tossed a bunch of ideas around and nothing seemed to fit, so I brought the whole kit and caboodle to the BMQG meeting in November for our massive show and tell.  Someone (sorry I didn’t catch who, but thank you!) suggested cutting the strips skinnier and sashing them in white.  YES!!

It turns out that I had EXACTLY enough to complete a full border and a long strip for the backing by cutting the strips in half – seriously!  There were only a few inches left when all was said and done!  The white sashing was perfect.  It gave the circle blocks a little breathing room and made those rainbow squares pop as a border. 

I had just enough of the rainbow strips left over to make a panel for the back, and added in a little knight's horse just for an extra touch of whimsy.

I really struggled with the quilting of this - not because it was difficult but because I love doing Angela Walter's chain squares pattern but still have not forced my machine into free-motion quilting submission.  Which meant that at every corner of every square, I was rotating this quilt through the tiny throat of my machine.  That's a lot of twisting and rotating!

It probably took the better part of a week of quilting a half-hour here and there and it was making me a little...resentful...toward the quilt in general.  But once the quilting was done and the binding was in progress, I started loving it again.

I was originally thinking that it would be fun to do a bright stripe for the binding, but couldn't find any fabric that I was really in love with for it.  Instead, I though this beige dot would be a nice compliment to the rainbow top.

I can't wait to browse all the categories, vote for some favorites and pick up some inspiration!