Charity Quilt Spotlight: Boise MQG

Over the next few months, we’ll be featuring the work of some amazing charity quilts from QuiltCon 2015. Our first post is by the Boise MQG. Take it away!

Laura Pukstas took the lead on organizing the Boise Modern Quilt Guild 2015 QuiltCon Charity Quilt submission. She gathered member feedback, finalized the design, and quilted it on her longarm machine. Most of the guild members wanted a lot of negative space and a non-traditional quilt layout. With this in mind, Laura worked on a quilt design that incorporated these elements. Laura says “I liked the idea of a block slowly building and getting bigger with additional elements being added to it. With the blocks getting larger in size, I wanted it to be emphasized by adding another color to each block. I liked the cascading feel of blocks starting in one corner and leading to one large block.”

Once the design was set, members were assigned a color, raided their fabric stashes, and helped to sew the individual blocks. Laura gathered the blocks and pieced together the quilt top, looking at it for several days to decide on a quilting design. She quilted some of the star block designs, various-sized flying geese, and a variety of filler designs to fill the expansive negative space. Two layers of batting made the quilting seriously pop, especially in the less-quilted areas. The quilting took a long time because it was so densely quilted.

 

Once quilted, it was Angela Bowman’s turn to apply the binding. She chose some blue fabric from her stash and tried to stop staring at the stellar quilting long enough to bind the quilt.