Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Day 7 - of 100 days of quilts


Settlers Crossing - American Patchwork & Quilting 1999



Settlers Crossing was our very first published quilt. Only our close friends know the story behind this quilt.

Back in 1998, Cori and I designed countless quilts on the computer using our Electric Quilt program. Well, one day we got a little gutsy, and printed out 6 of our favorite quilt designs, and sent them to APQ. And we told NO ONE that we did this. Not even my mother. And we didn't hear back from anyone, so we thought that it would just be our little secret that we had even tried to get a quilt published.

Five months later -out of the blue - a contract shows up in the mail for the Settlers Crossing quilt. We were shocked! And we were a little unprepared. What we did not tell the magazine was that the quilt didn't really exist...it was just a print out from the computer. So when a contract showed up, we pieced a quilt really fast!

I can't remember the timeline that we had, but obviously there was enough time that the staff at my mother's quilt shop hand quilted this project. I like how my mother marked it, making almost a circle around the one block, and echoing the border triangles up into the quilt.

Cori and I have learnt a lot about quilt magazines, and we have talked about writing out some of this knowledge, and putting it on our website, or along side of our blog. When this happens, we will let you know.

The hardest part of doing a published quilt is coming up with the name. (Try naming all of your quilts, and you will understand) But the best part is seeing how they will photograph your quilt. This is the photo that appeared in the magazine, and they had an awesome set that made our quilt look great.

-myra
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1 comment:

Jo Anne said...

Very nice. The quilting design certainly adds to the overall effect. Like the high contrast, also.