TGIFF

I've been asked by my quilting friend Laura to post to her blog for TGIFF (Thank God its Finished Friday).  Its so rare that I actually HAVE something finished it's rather exciting to be able to do this.  As most of my quilting is done by hand it takes me a while to complete stuff.  Not that I'm complaining.  Anyway, here's the big reveal.

This is my what I'm calling my Psycho 70's Apple Core Modern quilt.  Yeah, that's a mouthful.

Psycho-70's Apple Core queen sized quilt

 My apologies for the less then lovely photography.  I wasn't able to put it outside to photograph because I've been working too late recently to get home when it's still light enough out.  So I got the husband to stand behind this and hold it up.  The white background is very white though it doesn't look like it in this picture.  And the apple cores are very bright - again, the photo isn't the best.

Close up of apple cores

All the apple cores were pieced by hand using as many bright and unusual prints I could find.  I wanted the finished product to be a riot of color.  Originally I thought I would piece the entire quilt with the apple cores but decided I wanted to experiment with negative space as well so I incorporated a large panel of the apple cores into plain white fabric and put the panel to one side.

Close up of variegated thread

I appliqued the panel to the plain background by machine applique using variegated purple thread.  I then hand quilted around each apple core using heavy gauge red thread and a large stitch so it would show up well on the back. 

The back with hand stitching around the apple cores

I then machine quilted the negative space with vertical curved lines, again using variegated thread in lots of different colors. 

Full back

I like the finished product.  I would do another quilt with negative space just to experiment more with texture.  This one I wanted to keep relatively plain because I wanted the apple cores to really be the focus.  I think it looks rather nice on the bed.

 As well as on the couch.