My "Home Is Where You Make It" quilt

I'm excited to finally share this quilt with you! I was asked to come up with a quilt with a story line for Paintbrush Studio to hang in their booth at Market. They are sponsors of the Row by Row Experience, and they wanted a quilt that used their 10-color palette (from the Leather collection, which has great texture but is cotton, not actual leather!). 

Here's what I came up with:

I am super proud of it, especially because, ahem, applique is not my thing. There were times when making this quilt was painful, and I wished that I'd added less detail to it. So.many.little.pieces! But I do love how it turned out!

I printed out each row full size and in reverse at Office Max and then trace the shapes onto fusible web. I numbered each piece as I traced it so I could refer back to the original design to figure out what it was and where it went (harder than I though it would be!)

If you're wondering how long this took, here's a short little story to give you some idea. I took all the raw materials for this project to a day-long guild retreat. Optimistically, I also took two other projects. After 10 hours, I had three rows completed. I never touched the other projects. :) So the short answer is, quite a while, and longer than I thought! 

I had two friends who helped significantly on this quilt. Linda Smoker took my rough pencil sketches (that weren't even to scale--really just concepts!) and transformed them into digital designs for each row. She did a fabulous job! Then Diane Oakes machine quilted the quilt (in about 4 days' time!). I handed it to her with free reign, and I love what she did. So much detail, so much texture! And...as she quilted it, she stitched around the edges of every single fused piece (since I didn't.) Bless her! She used nine different thread colors in the quilt. Thanks, ladies! 

Here are additional close-ups of the quilt so you can see the details and the quilting. You can read more about the quilt here. 

Row 1: a happy little neighborhood.

Row 2: Winter arrives!

Row 3: The camper heads south to the beach. Over tall hills and along winding roads.

Row 4: Setting up camp near the beach. Notice the items that came along from home: the gnome, the flowers, the birdhouse, the quilt on the clothesline.

Row 5: Enjoying the beach!

The quilt is named "Home Is Where You Make It" because that idea is so true--home is where you are, no matter where you are. 

I used my sample camper as a label on the back. 

I love looking at the quilting lines on the back!

And one more texture shot--looking down the quilt.

And here is the quilt hanging in the Paintbrush Studio booth at Quilt Market. 

Pretty fun to say I've had a quilt there! 

Read more about my quilt here.
See the Leather fabrics here and see Paintbrush Studio's Row by Row palette here. 
Learn more about the Row by Row Experience here.