When Paige Alexander (Quilted Blooms) and Cheryl Brickey (Meadow Mist Designs) asked me to be part of the blog hop for their new book, Modern Plus Sign Quilts, I was absolutely overjoyed. I’ve never done something like this before and was so honored they asked.  I’ve followed both of them for some time and really respect their work.

They sent the blog hoppers photos of the quilts in the book and asked us to choose the quilts we were interested in.  I had no problem finding a quilt I wanted to make – there were several!  I looked at the quilts with an eye toward using a big bunch of Alison Glass fat quarters I had been hoarding…uh, saving…and think I found a good one with the Signature Plus quilt.

In the book the Signature Plus quilt has a red background with white plusses that can be used for signatures.  Cool idea for a wedding or reunion quilt, and I love the red and white of the original.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

However I decided to go full on color with my version!

This was my fabric pull.  I considered white for the background, but went with a grey fabric instead.  I tried out a few solid greys, but ultimately found this woven fabric that had a really great texture – it is a black Chambray fabric from Andover.

From there I made lots and lots (and lots!) of plusses.  That kept me pretty busy for most of the holiday break.  It seems I didn’t take many piecing-in-action photos, but I think you know what that looks like!

I got the top together reasonably quickly and was off to figure out a quilting plan.  I really wanted to highlight the Alison Glass prints in the plusses, so I chose my quilting designs to pull the color plusses.

This is a close up of the quilting as I worked on it.  I did diagonal lines between the big plusses, filled those with figure 8s, and then filled in the space around the small plusses with some free motion.

Here she is all finished – I call her Glass Plus:

a close up:

We went for a weekend getaway to Northern New Mexico one weekend right as I finished the binding and I got to take some photos:

and this kind of funny outtake of my husband trying to hold it up – I don’t love the shadow, but the clouds are so pretty:

Thanks again to Paige and Cheryl for the opportunity to participate in the blog hop and the opportunity to make one of their quilts. I had a great time making the quilt and love how it came out!

Glass Plus, final details:
Size:  63″ wide by 80″ long
Quilted with SoFine #50, color #408 – a medium grey
nearly 375,000 quilting stitches

Buy the Book!
If you buy it from Cheryl or Paige they will sign it for you:
Cheryl Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/584477239/
Paige Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/590417705/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Plus-Sign-Quilts-Techniques/dp/1617455695/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520456494&sr=8-1&keywords=modern+plus+sign+book