Madrona Road MQG Challenge: "Here Comes The Sun"

Even when I was a little girl, I wanted to enter a fabric or sewing challenge. I remember sitting with my mom going through the Keepsake Quilting catalog and seeing the challenge fabrics and wanting so badly to order them and to create something wonderful.

Some twenty years later, and I finally got my chance! I signed up for the Modern Quilt Guild Madrona Road challenge a few months back at the Omaha Modern Quilt Guild meeting! I picked up the fabric in early January and was so inspired to create this quilt that I named "Here Comes The Sun."

  

This is what I wrote about the quilt when I posted my photo in the flickr group: 

The Madrona Road line sang of the songs "You Are My Sunshine" and "Here Comes the Sun," so I knew immediately that I wanted to use it to depict light breaking up the darkness. The Princess and her Prince finally settle into a big life in a little house on a farmstead on Madrona Road. This is the view out of their kitchen window when the sunrise breaks over a dark field on an everyday kind-of-day in a happy life. 

It is a wall hanging size of 23.5 in x 27 in. It was pieced and quilted on my sewing machine and bound by hand.

Much to my (very excited) surprise, when I was contacted by the MQG and told that my quilt was chosen to be displayed in the Michael Miller Booth at QuiltCon in Austin, Texas later this month.   

I'm BEYOND THRILLED! 

I never expected it to be chosen among all of the amazing quilts and projects that were entered into the contest.

I had so much fun creating this quilt and playing with the fabric. I had so much fun browsing through all of the amazing pictures in the flickr group. And I'm having a lot of fun trying to convince my Mom that we have to go to QuiltCon now!

Here are a few other pictures that I took mid-process of my work on this quilt:

Arranging squares and working on my layout:

I raced myself to piece a backing, because I was driving myself crazy and losing tons of precious time arranging and rearranging the other fabrics I loved from the challenge. This is a picture of what I came up with: 

 

 And here is a closer picture of some of the quilting rays radiating out from the sun:

Big thank yous to the MQG for creating a wonderful challenge, to Violet Craft for designing beautiful and inspirational fabric and to Michael Miller for choosing my work.

Katie