Blogger's Quilt Festival: Fire & Ice

It's that time of year again! I'm so excited to reveal to you the (finally) finished Fire & Ice quilt. I paper pieced this quilt completely out of solids. I am so lucky that my mom lives near a quilting store with an entire wall of solids to choose from! My extremely wonderful husband helped me pick the colors out, which took quite awhile. Color choice was key in making this pattern really pop. They had to gradate well from one color to the next, and color intensity also played a huge role. Some colors didn't make the cut because they looked overly saturated or just too pale when placed next to the neighboring colors.

This has been a labor of love, and the first paper pieced pattern I ever designed myself. The shape is based on a keystone - as in, the middle brick that you place into an arch very last.

Keystones have a lovely wedge shape, and for some reason, I thought of depicting fire with the colors. Originally, there were supposed to be a lot more warm colors, with fuchsias, and just a touch of blue (picture the really hot blue flames) but you have to work with the fabrics available! The fuchsias in the store didn't play well with the rest of the colors. And this ended up working really well, with 8 warms and 8 cools, so I changed the name from the "Fire" quilt to the "Fire & Ice" quilt. I was hesitant to use black binding, as I feared it would be too pitch black, but I'm glad I went for it.

For the backing, I chose a graphic black and white print, which helped dictate the black binding. I pieced it with some black stripes in a simple, clean design:

I quilted it with straight lines, running from one corner of each piece to the opposite corner. Deciding how to quilt it was a real battle for me, and I got a lot of amazing suggestions, but in the end, I thought this went best with the feel of the quilt.

Since there were so many colors in the quilt top, I used monofilament thread on the top (you can see it shining in the light a little bit), and Sulky variegated gray thread on the back. The quilting hides in the busy pattern, but it's showcased in the black strips:

All in all, I'm so proud of this quilt - it's been my second baby for awhile now! - and I'm really happy to show it off to you.

I hope to have a pattern soon, but that'll take some time, since it's a bit complex. So for now, thanks for stopping by and be sure to check out all the other awesome quilts at the Blogger's Quilt Festival!!! And many thanks to Amy for putting on such a wonderful link up.

Edited to add: this is a wall quilt! Somebody was asking for nomination purposes. Enjoy the rest of the link  up show :)