Mother of Pearl revealed - Blogger's Quilt Festival

I've decided to share a new quilt for the Blogger's Quilt Festival. I finished Mother of Pearl a few weeks ago, and sent it straight off to Australian Patchwork and Quilting, which will be including it as a project later in the year. Sorry the photos aren't the best; I took these photos as soon as I'd finished the quilting, in harsh late-afternoon sun which over-accentuates the quilting (and those shocking creases). As soon as the binding was on, this quilt was parcelled-up and posted. I'll have to photograph it properly when I get ti back in a few months.

I designed Mother of Pearl nearly two years ago, intending it to be for my youngest niece. Then I decided to make her one of my beach scene quilts instead, but couldn't let this design go, and kept coming back to it, so I was thrilled when it was commissioned.

The thought behind the design was that the swirl would represent a mother's arms cradling her baby, but as the rest of the design grew and the colour-scheme asserted itself, it also gave the illusion of a pearl in an oyster; hence the name.

The centre block took an age to draft; I couldn't have done it without EQ7. It contains 165 pieces of fabric!

I love foundation piecing, and this was really the only way to piece such a block. I made it on a water-soluble foundation, because I didn't fancy tearing all the fiddly pieces out, but didn't have any sheets bigger than letter/A4, so got out my water-soluble thread, overlapped two sheets by about 1/4 and joined them with a running stitch.

The piecing of this one block took several evenings, and used 1 1/2 bobbins alone, but was a joy to make and to see the swirl forming.

The enormous amount of piecing caused the 10in block to shrink to 9 3/4in, even on the foundation. Luckily this was the first block I made, and consequently I reduced the size of the rest of the blocks to match! Once the centre block was done, the rest came together in no time!

The quilting was all fairly straightforward, though I would probably hove done something fancier if I'd had more time.
 

 
Now head over to check out the rest of the entries in the Blogger's Quilt Festival!