Flea Market Fancy Raw Edge Circle Quilt

Amy's Creative Side has started her Spring 2013 Quilt Festival.  This is my entry for the festival.

This Flea Market Fancy fabric line by Denyse Schmidt has been a favorite of mine ever since it came out.  I had it in my cart on Etsy for months and months waiting for the right project to come my way.  Then one day I got a bridal shower invitation for one of the sweetest girls I know and instantly knew that these fabrics were the ones I wanted to use for her quilt.  I also purchased some Kona solids off Etsy to coordinate with the Flea Market Fancy prints.

My pattern choice was a raw edge circle quilt.  Alison at Cluck Cluck Sew gives a great tutorial for it.  I cut 72 - 8 inch squares and 72 - 6.5 inch circles. 

Each circle was stitched on a square 1/4 inch in to allow for a nice raw edge.

After all the circles were sewn onto the squares, I then cut each block into 4 equal pieces......

 

At this point, I noticed that some of the prints were showing through the "circle" part and decided to snip the fabric from the backs.  See Alison's tutorial for more detail on this step.

The next step took the longest.  I then spread out all the quartered pieces and matched them to make new blocks.  I made sure I created no two blocks that were the same and tried to keep an even balance between prints and solids.

 

After the blocks were sewn I spent a couple of hours in the recliner with my small snipping scissors trimming the extra fabric off the seams so the blocks were not so bulky.

All the blocks were then sewn together and I added a six inch border in the gold/red floral print.

For the backing I chose the grey leaf print.  I purchased five yards, cut it into two (2) 2.5 yard pieces and sewed them together to create one piece of fabric large enough for the backing.  I like to use the carpet in my living room as my work area to get the quilt pinned and ready for free motion quilting.  I lay the backing fabric face down on the carpet and use safety pins to secure it through the carpet and into the carpet pad.  Once the backing fabric is in place, I then spread out the batting (I used Cream Rose from Joann's) and then spread the quilt top next. 

I use many many safety pins.  Probably close to 300.  I've learned over the years that more is better.

I used the free motion quilting technique for this quilt.  I did not quilt inside the circles.  I did not want to cross over the areas of fabric around each circle that I wanted to fray.

 

I made my own binding with the fabric scraps I had left over.  I cut strips at 2.5 inches, sewed them together, folded in half and steamed with the iron.

 

After I got the binding ready, I spread the quilt out on the floor to lay the binding around the edge to make sure I had enough.  Several times during each quilt projects I have to battle with this boy.  He always wants to engage in some playtime when I sit down on the floor.  This is the look he gives me right before he turns wild.

I stitched the quilt binding onto the front and the back.  You can search the Cluck Cluck Sew blog for a tutorial on how to do that too.

 

 

Here it is finished before putting through a wash/dry cycle to fray up the raw edges.

Here's how it looked after one wash/dry cycle.  It did not fray up as much as I wanted it to, so I repeated the process and it did much better.

After the second wash/dry cycle.........

And here's the lucky lady that gets to keep it.  I'll add a better picture when I get one.  This one was taken with a cell phone facing into the sunlight.

I love how it turned out and will probably be making a couple more just like this one!  Scroll down to see who I have linked to this week.