Bloggers Quilt Festival; my first entry!

I am so excited this weekend. I have never entered a quilt in a show, lets face it, I haven't made many quilts! I am going to enter my version of the Hummingbird quilt that I made for my granddaughter in the small quilt category of the Bloggers Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side.

The quilt is a paper-pieced pattern called Hummingbird from Rita of Red Pepper Quilts. The fabrics are from Nel Whatmore's Secret Garden in Linen and I love the brightness especially of the backing.

I had the top long arm quilted and was so pleased with the result. Its now in pride of place on my granddaughter's French day bed.

If you are a new visitor to my small blog, thank you so much! I'm so enjoying my contact with the blogging community. If you are a follower already, thank you for your patience with seeing the quilt again. I am so proud of it. I will be blogging again after a busy weekend about my visit to the Malvern Quilt Show and progress on my Triangle Quilt.

Enjoy the beautiful sunny weather this weekend,

Catherine

Trumpet fanfare for my first ever quilt finish!

I'm feeling really pleased as I finally have a finished, bound and labelled quilt to show. I picked up my Hummingbird quilt yesterday from Sue Phillips of School House Quilting all ready to stitch down the binding and label. The quilting is edge to edge with a bit of a butterfly design. On the back it looks as if the butterflies are landing on the flowers.

I had asked for lots of advice about the label and tried all sorts of pens. None looked quite right. Maybe I'm just not neat enough. In the end I decided to use my machine to embroider the label on the background fabric (Spectrum plain latte) and the result is OK with me.

The binding is in the same fabric as the backing; Nel Whatmore's Secret Garden Hedgerow in the linen colour way. It's fantastically colourful and makes me happy so I think it will suit Lexie.

Now, the question is, to Wash or not to wash? What does everyone do at this stage? Leave well alone;  hand wash or gentle machine wash? Line dry or gentle machine dry?
I would really appreciate some views of this. I did not prewash the fabrics (I was banking on modern fabrics being stable) but I would put some colour catchers in the machine IF I decide to go ahead and wash.

I'm taking the quilt on Easter Sunday to Wiltshire along with lots of Easter eggs. I really hope she loves it on her new bed.


Enjoy the Spring sunshine,


Catherine

I'm linking up with TGIFF over at Quilt Matters with my first finish.