Natalie's Round Robin Quilt

Back in January I held a "Thank You" giveaway on Instagram.

Bear with me while I share a little backstory to the giveaway.

You see, I joined the Instagram quilting community a little over a year ago.

Before then, I only had a small handful of quilty friends, and most were a good 20 years older than me. 

When I started on Instagram, I'll admit I was a bit uncomfortable with the open format. I was used to Facebook, where you 'allowed' people into your life. This was initially true on Instagram, but then somehow people I didn't know started following me and commenting on my posts. I honestly was unsure how to react. It was cool, but could I trust these people? And they didn't even really know me, and I sure didn't know them! 

But then I noticed something great happening. The more I posted and followed others' posts, the more I got to know them and they got to know me! And before I knew it I had hundreds of new quilty friends who were cheering me on in my quilting endeavors and inspiring me with theirs!

So, in January, with the start of a brand new year, I decided I wanted to give back to the Instagram quilting community that accepted me with open arms. I did two drawings. The first was for 50% off a quilting job (custom or edge to edge). I'll be posting about that quilt in a few posts.

The second was for a completely free quilting job. 

Natalie was the winner, and this is her quilt.

I had actually met Natalie once at a Modern Quilt Guild meeting, but until she dropped her quilt off to me I hadn't realized that we had met in person, even though we had been Instagram friends for a while.

Natalie's quilt was part of a Round Robin done by her quilt guild. If, like me, you have never heard of a Round Robin...each member does one border on each quilt. Because each person has a different style of quilting, each border is made to compliment the owner's style, and so each quilt turns out completely different. (There may be more rules to it, but this is my limited understanding of how it works.)

These Round Robin quilts were displayed at HMQS 2015 in Sandy, Utah. It was an honor to machine quilt this for Natalie. She is such a sweet person and a very talented quilter!

There were so many different areas to quilt on this quilt that my quilting plan for this quilt was literally to load the quilt and just have fun quilting it. My only goals were to use the piecing as my design guides and then repeat design elements throughout the quilt. Natalie said she liked feathers, so I tried to incorporate those in different areas of the quilt.

I loved each border of this quilt, but my absolute favorite was the blue and orange braided border. I honestly don't know why I fell in love with it, especially since orange has never been a favorite color of mine, but my eyes just kept coming back to that border.