Introducing the Hourglass quilt!

I received an email this morning that made my day (and no, it wasn't the one announcing that my kids had a snow day!). 

The subject line said "Cover Girl" and this was the image in the email:

Yep! That's my quilt, Hourglass, on the cover of the January/February 2018 issue of Modern Patchwork. I'm thrilled! 

A little background...I submit design ideas to magazines fairly sporadically. Every once in a while I make time, do a big push, and submit several designs at once. I had just such a productivity spurt in mid August. I submitted multiple designs (to a few different magazines) and had FOUR accepted. I was thrilled, but I was also committing to making four quilts in a pretty short period of time. 

Hourglass was the first. This is the largest quilt I've made in a while, and also the largest I've made for a magazine. I actually didn't intend for this quilt to be so big. I had the hourglass shape in mind and began designing with 2-1/2" wide strips. By the time I finished the design, it was 80" x 92"!

The quilt is made using five different colors of the Painter's Palette Solids from Paintbrush Studio Fabrics--three shades of teal, an orange, and black. 

It consists of forty 2-1/2" wide strips sewn together, each 80" across. So a lot of fairly boring strip sewing that took a long time. 

Did I mention that I had about 10 days to piece this?! My parents came to visit during this timeframe and my mom helped cut and press strips as I sewed, which was a huge help!

I took this photo at the end of September, before I mailed the quilt to Modern Patchwork.

This is not a great photo--I need to get my (tall) husband to hold it up for a nice flat shot. But you can see the entire design here. It's all about color placement. The medium teal diamonds pop from the darker background.

And I took this photo today, during our snowstorm.

Another snow shot:

You can see the texture here. My friend Diane Oakes quilted this using straight horizontal lines. We decided to use different thread colors--a gray/blue on the two darker teals, black on black, orange on orange and light teal on light teal. The stitch lines really blend into the fabric and allow the design to pop.

I'm looking forward to having the actual magazine in my hand soon! If you want a copy, it'll be on newsstands December 26th.