Madrona Road Fabric Challenge - Melissa

Today we are featuring my Madrona Road Fabric Challenge quilt, City of Bridges.

I took the "Roads and Bridges" theme pretty literally in my quilt!  Being a bridge nerd, I've had some ideas for bridge quilts floating around in my head for a while.  My initial thought was to do something with curved applique "vines" inspired by the Smithfield Street Bridge.  Well, I've never successfully done anything with applique, so I didn't want to spend the time/waste the fabric trying it out right now.

City of Bridges

I spent some time brainstorming with a friend and we came up with a sketch based on some photos of art deco details on the Golden Gate Bridge.  I made a dimensioned drawing based on the sketch and tried planning out what colors would go where - Gina helped me make some decisions and adjustments and then it was time to start cutting!  

City of Bridges - Back

The mostly yellow portion at the top is made up of improv-pieced strips.  This was new for me - just slapping something together is pretty scary at first, but I love the way it turned out!  Everything came together quickly, dimensions were adjusted on the fly, and fabric was auditioned as it was cut.  It was so neat to see something come together so well even though it wasn't spelled out step-by-step. 

City of Bridges - FMQ

Much of the quilt has dense parallel line quilting.  Instead of appliqueing the main cable, I quilted it in a darker thread.  The suspenders are quilted in matching thread to let them fade back into the quilt.  One of my current goals is to improve my free motion quilting.  What better way to practice than quilting some swirling fog in the background??

City of Bridges is probably my favorite quilt I've made yet.  The quilting really does the trick for me!


Four down, one to go!  We'll be featuring Jodi's Madrona Road Fabric Challenge quilt next. 

-Melissa