I finished my quilt for the Michael Miller Spring Cotton Couture Challenge and just entered it online. The title is, “Robot Couture.”

This is the first quilt I have ever entered into a contest or show.

Here’s what I wrote in my entry about the process:

Couture, to me, means a gown with exquisite details. I sketched dresses for inspiration. My daughter said, “That looks like a dress for a robot.” It had polka dots and hexagons which looked like bolts. I created the “bolts” using a reverse appliqué technique. I placed couture fabric with a white back, drew a circle and stitched; cut the hole out, flipped and ironed. They are attached using y-seam technique. I added “grandmothers gardens”, overlapping them up the side of the quilt. I used all the fat-eighths I received, combined with five other colors from the collection.

The challenge was to create a modern quilt using pastels from the spring collection.  Michael Miller sent fat-eighths of eight of the colors from the spring cotton couture collection: opal, breeze, blossom, spa, spring, candlelight, creamsicle and soft white. I wanted to use all of them, and I did. I also added lavender, lilac, geranium, bubblegum and fern green.

One of the biggest challenge was photographing the quilt. I wanted to take advantage of the gray skies today and found this piece of equipment at the football practice field to hang the quilt, using an old jump robe:

The digital photo had to be no greater than 1800 pixels on the longest side. That required me to use Photoshop to resize the photo — a new thing for me as well. The one concern I had was that the photos didn’t exactly depict the actual color of the fabric and that’s pretty important since this was a fabric challenge. The final photos represent the feel of the fabric colors and are pretty darn close.

FYI:

I machine quilted the circle/hexagons. I used a reverse applique technique to create them. And, yes, I machine stitched them together using y-seam technique. I hand quilted it using Presensia thread, No. 355 (light gray) and No. 266 (deep purple) and some embroidery thread in yellow and light blue inside the circles. I debated whether the flowers needed more quilting but decided the emphasis should be on the dress.

Thinking of Spring,

Wanda

Update: December 10, 2014: My quilt wasn’t chosen for the show. I’m really disappointed, but it will force me to review my thinking of what is a modern quilt.