Blogger's Quilt Festival--Compass Rose

I hadn't originally thought to enter this quilt into BQF, but this is truly my favorite quilt to date.  My original blog post on this quilt is here and I talked a little more about it here, too.
I had originally designed it to be red, white and blue.  But as I was collecting the fabrics and finalizing my plans, I fell in love with the orange/navy combo.

I was inspired by the antique compass roses on old maps.  I love their detail and variety.  I was drawn to the symbolism of direction and coming home.  I felt that paper piecing was the best way to keep it clean, simple and modern with a nod to the antique.  It took quite a bit of patience, but the perfect intersections and points were so worth the effort!

Because the quilt itself is so simple, I wanted to do something special with the quilting.  Just using my non-quilting Janome DC5100 machine, I ultimately decided to go with straight line quilting.  I had thought to echo the 4 cardinal directions of the center star and embellish a little with FMQ, but once I started working on the concentric circles, I knew I had to continue in that direction.  It took many hours to stitch all those circles =) and I really like the contrast of the horizontal lines and circles.

Compass Rose Baby Quilt
Final Dimensions: 42" x 50"
Machine pieced and quilted by Me in July & August 2014
Category:  Home Machine Quilted

Please visit my other entry, Boo2U2, here.