2015 Moccasin Block of the Month Finished!!

This Block of the Month was discovered on Pinterest last December and the project started on January 1, 2015. It was presented by Gen X Quilters, www.genxquilters.com, by AnnMarie Chany and the monthly 9" blocks were emailed to me on the first of the month until December which had the HSTs and the border etc. I brought the project to my quilt retreat late November and finished the top-I figured out the sizes of the squares and triangles before waiting until December 1st. The project advertisement displayed the quilt in pinks, yellows, oranges, purples, white and dark navy blue. I chose this analogous color scheme because I just love blue violet and lime green together. All of my fabrics were solids, tone on tones and the purple is a batik-no obvious print fabrics. The approximate size of the quilt is 68" square. Basically a fun time except for a few blocks but I have never seen this block layout and using 9" blocks the quilt didn't get too huge.
I bought myself a new Viking Sapphire 960Q sewing machine in November and did all the machine quilting on it. I used an echo stitch in the HSTs and all the purple background/negative space. The background echo stitching is all going in a vertical direction as seen in the second photo below.

The third photo is the backing fabric which I found at Joann Fabrics-I was able to duplicate all the colors of the quilt in the backing fabric. I love the flowers and am terribly excited about this fabric. Unfortunately I could not find the remainder of the backing fabric to use when it was time to construct the border so I used the fabric I bought a year ago for this purpose. The next day I found the backing fabric-such is life!!

AnnMarie Chany is doing a BOM for 2016-she has published a book that is available on Amazon and I bought it as a Christmas gift to myself and will do next year's BOM.

Bella Jordana: Second Version

 I have decided to turn Bella Jordana into a pattern for 2016 and need a few samples for my pattern cover. The original quilt in the second photo was intended to be my daughter Jordana's (hence the pattern title) Christmas because she likes a shabby chic style. While at the quilt show in Houston I purchased a Moda "Good Karma" charm pack and asked Jordana if she liked this fabric (she had not seen the other finished wall hanging) and she liked the greens in the fabrics to go with the bare spot in her kitchen.
I would have used navy blue for the dark applique color but I bought a nice dark green in Door County WI on my travels to my November quilt retreat to repeat the green theme. 
After finishing the quilt I thought any rhinestones would get lost in the fabric print. I did embellish the lips with nail polish and I used a left over charm square to create a yo-yo flower for the hair. I added a few buttons and called it finished. Both quilts are machine quilted the same.

 

This is the original quilt which has a lot more embellishment and will be the cover of the upcoming pattern. The choice of fabric really does set the mood because the top photo's quilt is more contemporary and the lower photo's quilt is more old fashioned. I like them both!!