Blogger's Quilt Festival

It's been fun reading posts on my friend's blogs to see what project they selected for the Blogger's Quilt Festival hosted by Amy's Creative Side. I've never participated in this online quilt festival and thought this just might be the time to toss my quilt into the ring. 

For my entry I've selected Riot in the Barn:

Riot in the Barn

This string quilt is very special to me...I made it for my sister. I don't get to see my sister very often, we average about once every seven-ten years. She and I live on opposite side of the country. 

I'm so happy with how this quilt turned out. It is so totally out of character for me. I am not normally a bright, crazy type of girl. I thought my sister would enjoy something that would bring sunshine during the California rainy season. The main fabric line in this string quilt is California Dreamin by Jenean Morrison. 

California Dreamin by Jenean Morrison

I was drawn to the fun string quilts cropping up throughout the online quilting community and thought it would be a great quilt to use with these fabrics. Initially I auditioned the usual string quilt layout of diamonds.



The diamonds looked great, but I was not sold on them. I wanted something different than what I was seeing everywhere else. I decided to try moving the blocks around and ended up with a barn raising layout. I knew right away it was exactly what I wanted.



After the blocks were sewn together I felt it still needed a little something different to make it a bit larger and give the top a completed look. I had just learned how to piece diamonds on point borders and thought they might be just the right compliment for the giant diamond in this quilt



I was absolutely thrilled when I was able to get the dimensions to work out just right for the diamond border to fit! By just using the diamond borders on two sides I felt it helped to play up the off center nature of the barn raising layout. 

Every time I looked at this quilt it was such a fun riot of color so I combined that thought with the barn raising layout to come up with it's name: Riot in the Barn.

I am linking this post up with the Blogger's Quilt Festival. I'm entering it into the Large Quilt Category.